Dumaguete Diving
Dumaguete is known as the city of gentle people which serves as an apt descriptor for the atmosphere. The four universities keep the local population well educated and friendly. The majority of visitors we encountered were from Europe and China. I hear that the area has a rich night life, but our time was limited so we spent most of it underwater.
We made it out to Apo Island on our first day and I cannot help but write about it in dramatic tones. Soft and hard corals competed fiercely over the limited real estate creating a dynamic environment full of colors that would seem unnatural anywhere else. And while the diverse coral cover at Apo was nearly 100% in places, the wildlife was even more spectacular. There were times when I had to choose between the in-your-face humphead parrotfish and the hungry hawksbill sea turtle, all against a staggering backdrop of unimaginable colors. Apo Island ranks alone as the single best dive I have ever done.
If Apo is all about sweeping seascapes, the local sites at Dauin are as impressive on a macro scale. The local dive spots are very close to the resorts with our farthest near-shore site being a brief 10-minute boat ride away. At first the dark volcanic silt seems an unlikely place to find tropical creatures, but then armies of cryptic animals start appearing from the muck. Within one day, I had checked many dozens of animals from my macro bucket list. In my first dive alone we came across a warty frogfish, seahorses and all 3 species of ghost pipefish. It was uncanny. Before each dive I started asking the DM to find something rare and specific like a blue-ringed octopus or a stargazer and without fail, they picked one out of the muck. They claimed that flamboyant cuttlefish hadn't been seen for months, so I requested we try and sure enough, I was playing with a pair of them on the next dive.
