Moalboal Quo Vadis Resort
Coming to the Philippines from Europe is always a long journey with stop-overs and long transfers to the final hotel place. But in case of the Quo Vadis Dive Resort in Moalboal (Cebu) it is worth the effort.
After having flown with Asiana Airlines FRA-ICN-CEB with a stop-over of nine hours at Seoul to Cebu (best connection from Germany), we were picked – up by the pre-arranged taxi and taken to Moalboal. As the plane arrived at 01:00 am it was only a two-hours-ride to Moalboal as at night there is no traffic (calculate three hours during daytime).
We booked the Premier Suite which is a single bungalow facing the sea. It was heaven as we arrived very exhausted and stressed from our work and needed two days of sleep and relaxation. This bungalow offers all privacy needed and even noise from the nearby pool and restaurant cannot be noticed there. The room is nicely furnished with fridge and TV and equipped with a nice balcony and sea views. Internet signal varies according to the weather and can only be found around the pool and dive center. It is sufficient to send short messages but any download of documents takes years.
There are also several rooms facing the sea (Dexluxe Seaview Room) built in a large L-building. The front terrace offers also seaviews but you hear when your neighbours are coming home so nothing for people with a light sleep. The third room category are the single bungalows set in the garden of the resort, each with a private terrace and the only noise to hear the sound of the cocks at 5:30am when the sun rises.
The neighbourhood of the resort is very rural. Step 100m out of it and you stay in a green countryside with small farms and stalls selling local fruit on the road for pennies. Next to the resort you find a mini-market and some other restaurants as well as a souvenir shop. Prices in general are very low, but we found that the resort-owned restaurant Arista serves the best food – quality – and pricewise. A 4-course menu with garlic bread, a mixed salat or calamaris fritter as starter, then a curry or fishfilet or beef with rice as well as a dessert would cost around 4 Euros /6 USD and could compete with any restaurant in Germany.
Only the breakfast was a little poor with only toast, eggs and pancakes to choose from but the Swedish resort manager had some cornflakes and milk organized so we could enjoy also a nice cornflakes bowl with fresh fruit in the morning. Try the Hamburger for a quick lunch between two dives and the fresh Mango or Banana shakes – heaven!
The Quo Vadis Dive Resort offers a professional runned dive center. You can rent all your equipment if necessary and also do all PADI courses. Diving is offered 3-4 times a day from morning dive at 9:00am to night dive at the house reef with chances to see Mandarin fish at 5:00pm. Between the dives you can enjoy good food at either the restaurant or bar or relax on a sunbed at the pool.
The local dive guides are excellent and the boat crews very helpful. Big groups are split to several guides and if you are experienced divers they let you dive on your own pace apart from the group. Diving is mostly on walls without any current, with depths from 5-25m and short boat rides of 5-20 minutes. A very special dive is at the Banasama Reef just 5 minutes by boat and off the beach, where you can find a HUGE sardine swarm staying with you through the dive. We haven´t seen anything like that, not in Palau, not in Bali, not anywhere in Raja Ampat. When these sardines move to Pescador Island that is when you have the thresher sharks there (so not during our stay).
The diving as well as the resort even exceeded our expactations so we would come back anytime.
