Philippines
My Philippines Adventure
The Trip to the Philippines
On Thursday, April 18th at 3:00 AM, I awoke and prepared to head to the airport for my long anticipated trip to the Philippines. Not only was this to be my first trip to the Philippines, but it was my first trip ever to the Pacific for diving. I was excited and more than ready to go.
I arrived at the airport (after driving to the park and fly, ensuring that I had locked my van and catching the bus) at 4:30 AM. My LAX flight (first class, all on points) was to leave at 6:20AM, and I like to be way ahead of time.
I did my check in at the counter, where they went ahead and checked my bags all the way through to Cebu (my final destination in the Philippines) but not me. Wonderful, I thought – no bag drag through LAX! I would rue that courtesy in coming days.
I made the mistake of trying to find some coffee…nothing was open at NOLA (MSY). I ran around the airport and concourse looking for anything that looked like it was open or about to open. I found one that was readying to open and decided to wait until they opened at 5:30AM. With the growing line, I am glad I stuck around, otherwise the wait in line would have been well over 30 minutes. Got my coffee and headed back to Gate 1, sat down, got out the iPad and did a check in, checked my email, checked Facebook and then went back to reading the novel I had.
Plane left on time…a surprise because many times, even with the first flight out, something happens to delay the flight. Arrived in Houston without issue, and then it was the run across the airport to my next flight. Sure enough it was delayed for an hour, but I had built in a lot of time to my schedule so that I would arrive in plenty of time to catch my Philippine Air flight to Manila.
Arrived in LAX and found I had to switch terminals, so after asking around, I caught the bus between terminals and headed to the International Terminal. Got there and had to walk through the most atrocious noxious fumes and pollution I have ever encountered, I gagged and my eyes started watering and it continued until I got inside. The International terminal looked old and dirty to me and the signs were few, and people to help you were almost non-existent. I looked around for Philippine Air…nothing – no signs, no windows. Asked around and was told it was in the third set of check-in counters but found nothing there. Finally asked a person at a check-in counter for another airline where the Philippine Air check-in’s were and was informed they did not open until 4:30PM. So, it was now around 11:30AM, LAX time and I decided to head upstairs and get something to eat. Also, I wanted to take the time to call my mother and let her know I had made it that far safely and to use the iPad for Facebook check-in and retrieving emails. I will say that the area for the restaurants was clean and looked very nice. After eating I was told that I could only access the Wi-Fi from two areas there – when I went to them, seating was extremely limited and the few (and by that I mean one in each area) plugins for charging your devices were totally full and I was never able to charge my stuff. I gave up, just found a seat (after a 30 minute wait) and read until 4:00PM. I then headed downstairs to the Philippine Air check-in counters. The line was so long already when I got there, it looked to be at least a 1 to 1.5 hour wait to get through to a counter. I finally get to a check-in counter and get informed that I need to pay another 25.00 for the “extra wide” seat I was assigned on my itinerary. That took another half hour, then back to the counter to show that I paid and get my boarding passes. I headed on upstairs to the gate. The gate seating area is narrow, cramped and dirty/grey looking. I have always heard so many nice comments about LAX and I can tell you I was surprised at how outdated and dinghy it was. Long wait until that 10:30PM flight (now it is 12:30 my normal time and I have been up since 3:00AM), but we finally board and settle into our seats, which if those were “extra wide” I will eat my hat. I was told by someone that I should head back to see what the normal seats were like – I did that later on during the flight and they indeed were much narrower and you could not move them as far back as the ones in which I was sitting.
We were told, depending on winds and weight and so on that there was the possibility of landing in Guam to refuel. As it turned out, the flight was not even close to full and we went straight to Manila. I am not one to sleep on planes, but I finally managed to grab a 2 to 3 hour nap. We land in Manila and head over to the Domestic terminal and find our gate. And we wait for 4 hours until we can board and fly to Cebu.
The arrival
We arrive in Cebu on Saturday morning (10 something AM), I am just glad that the plane rides are over for now! We go to get our luggage, and I wait and I wait and I wait – no luggage. I have only the bag with my camera and one pair of underwear, pjs and an extra t-shirt (no shorts) and 1 bathing suit. I did have my meds as well, so I was ok for that. Off we go to the missing luggage area (there are 5 of us, all of us had bags checked through from MSY to Cebu) and they start trying to locate our bags. The couple with two children was in far worse case than I was, their 5 bags were missing and they had no clothes for themselves or the children. Just in case you are wondering, the people whose luggage was missing had used 3 different (American, United and Delta) airlines when leaving MSY to LAX and all 3 had checked our bags all the way through at 3 different times of the day on Thursday the 18th. It was found later on, that everyone else had done the bag drag at LAX to the International terminal, and that is why their luggage made it. In my case there was a 12 hour layover, so why did it not make it? No one has ever given me an answer to that question. Conclusion and my Solution, ALWAYS do the bag drag in LAX. Anyway, they locate all our bags, they are still in LAX, never loaded onto the plane for Manila. They assured us they would get them on the next plane out of LAX to Manila and then to Cebu. They then told us we would need to sign a release for them to release the luggage to a driver from the resort to pick up the luggage once it arrived. I told them, I would sign it at the resort and give it to the driver when he left for the airport, the others said the same thing.
Saturday afternoon - Moalboal
Two and half hour ride to the resort from the airport. HARROWING!!! The streets are narrow, snake like turns abound and I saw no stop signs or traffic lights. Wires were hanging everywhere from the “utility” poles. The driver would swing around bikes and “tricycles” and small buses (beautifully painted, by the way) and barely miss them all by inches. Never so frightened in my life!!!
We get to the resort intact, thank goodness! I had planned to buy a pair of shorts from their dive shop, but they had none, they also did not have a t-shirt in my size (large). I am hot, tired, dirty and have nothing clean to change into – this is not a picture of a happy Pat. While it is only 2:30PM and everyone else is taking off to do an afternoon dive, I take a shower, get into the pjs and go to sleep. I slept until 6AM (their time) the next morning.
Sunday morning - I go to breakfast in my spare t-shirt and everyone loves it (it is my dive-slut t-shirt, “anywhere, anytime and any buddy”.) So, my attire is the talk of the group, OH, the JOY! (that by the way is sarcasm) The rest of the group heads on out to the morning dive, and I walk around the resort looking at the flowers, taking some pictures of them and try to relax. I worry when my stuff goes missing, it is hard for a control freak like I am to accept and adjust to it and move on easily. The group comes back talking about everything they saw and what all I missed seeing – great! They head out on the 2nd dive of the day and I go to the room and take a nap. Lunch time rolls around and I head to the restaurant to eat. Also I check with the Resort owner if they have any news on the bags. They did – it appears that all the bags were at the Cebu airport and the driver was picking them up (there were 13 bags – that covered all 5 people who claimed the bags…the family and 4 other individuals.) I ate lunch in a better frame of mind.
All the bags arrived after lunch, and before the 3PM dive, so I rush to the room, get the dive gear out, jump into my Dive Goddess skin (I only took 4 for the trip) and head to the dive shop to get a tank analyzed and set up the gear for the DM to take out to the boat.
Just so you know – the group was large, 30 people, that came to 5 boats of 6 per boat. The resort only had 4 boats, so they had to rent a boat from another resort to accommodate us. The group I was in got to be in the rented boat (as well as the boat captain and the DM from that resort.)
It was a wonderful dive – so much colour!!! So many things I have never seen before. I was turning my head this way and that, it was for me, sensory overload. Fantastic!!! Magical!!! There was current at the first resort, so we were picked up after an hour by the boat which had followed our bubble trail. I geared off in the water and then climbed up the (to me) steep ladder. I really wanted to just jump back in with another tank and see even more things. We go back to the resort and upon arrival at the docks, a guy from one of the other boats approached me wanting to know if I would do a night dive with him. Since I had missed two dives the morning, I said sure. We delayed going to dinner until after the dive and once my SI reached 50 minutes we signed out on the board and we headed out to the drop off. Wedon (his real name) did not have a dive light with him, but I did, so when it started getting dark, I turned it on. We were out for 55 minutes when my light went out (I guess it was not fully charged after all) and we head back in the dark to the dock. Took us about 5 minutes to make it back to the dock. We geared off, rinsed off our gear, left the tanks on the sea wall (we were told to do that) signed in on the board and went to clean up for dinner.
The next 5 days went as follows – breakfast, analyze 3 tanks for the day, morning dive #1 (usually 60+ minutes) SI at “White Beach” or if close, head back to the resort, maybe eat a snack, morning dive #2 and then back to the resort for lunch. Dive crew handles your gear, so you can clean up for lunch and go eat lunch. At 3PM head out for the afternoon dive (usually 60+ minutes as well) and then head back to resort. If you are doing a night dive, then you analyze a tank and set your gear up. Except for one boat night dive, all night dives are shore dives. With the tide going out and leaving more and more sand and reef exposed, I opted to do a night boat dive and not do the shore dives. It got to where, coming back from the afternoon dive, you had to get off the boat and walk over the reef to get to shore. The tide was so low they could not get the boats to the dock. Just as an FYI – coral hurts if you step on it in your stocking feet…you should have your boat shoes on before walking from boat to shore. I used a lot of foul language when we had to walk back from the last afternoon dive. After dropping us in the water the boat had headed back to the resort, with my boat shoes on the boat. Had they told us about this, I would have stuck them in a pocket of my BCD.
On all dives, there was current, not ripping by any means, but you could feel it if you tried to turn around and go back to something. Also there were tons of little jellies and siphonophores in the last 20 to 30 feet of water. I have posted pictures with this report (not good ones) of some of the stingers that were to blame for my swollen face and neck. I was stung all over the neck and face, even on the chin, under the regulator and on the upper lip. My face and neck swelled up big-time and turned really red. I got some benadryl from one of the people on my dive boat and then got cortisone cream from the doctor (father of the 2 little girls) for applying to the stings directly. For the first 2 days I was in agony and had to sit on my hands not to scratch! After using the cortisone cream for 2 days things got better. Now you are wondering, no more stings? Well there would have been but someone in the Group (the dive shop owner in fact) lent me a nylon hood to wear that would cover most of my face and neck. It was yellow and pink flowers and did not really go with my dive skins, but on the other hand looking unmatched and stupid was well worth not being stung anymore. No one was allowed to take pictures of me in the water or elsewhere while wearing the mismatched hood and skins.
I did 18 dives at the first resort on my trip and I will not bore you with a rundown of every dive we did and how long in the water and so forth, but I will give you a list of the dive sites:
Batayana, House Reef, Dolphin House, Kasai Wall, Talisay Point, Eyoy, Copton Bay (airplane wreck), Basdiot, Pescador (right shoulder to the wall), Pescador (the other way), Talisay Wall, Sanctuary, Goby Point, Tongo Wall, Oscar Cave and Oscar Cave a second time. 18 dives in Cebu.
On the last night at the first resort, getting to sleep was hard, the diehard drinkers were partying it up at the pool which was right behind our room and at the bar which was in front of our room. However, I did manage to get about 8 hours sleep by getting to the room and away from the heavy drinkers by 9PM well before their heavy drinking began. How do I know – their yelling and carrying on woke me several times during the night.
Saturday Morning, we check out and get ready to head for Dumaguete, first we have breakfast and then take care of the tips.
It is a 3.5 hour ride to the ferry, and once again it is a harrowing ride, made worse by the fact that the day was some kind of holiday and there were people everywhere! We make it to the Ferry landing and thankfully we did not kill or maime any natives enroute. We wait about 30 minutes before we can board the ferry, and sure enough, we get stuck on the inside, where it is hot and stuffy and way too many people and maybe not enough deodorant (although, honestly, nothing holds up in that humidity and heat!) A 20 minute ferry ride to Dumaguete and we disembark. We wait for our luggage to be off loaded and we identify it for the staff of the next resort (in Dumaguete) so they can take it to the jeepney and buses they have waiting to get us to the resort. It is a 30 minute ride to the resort…and we turn off the main road onto a dirt road and it sure looked like there was nothing there. We stopped and off loaded, and walked for a minute and all of a sudden the resort grounds opened up and it was lovely!
Saturday afternoon - Dumaguete
We check in, our luggage is taken to our rooms, we get lunch and they bring us our room keys during the meal. There is only one key per room. So you are constantly making arrangements with your roommate as to how to handle when she or I are at the spa, or diving when the other isn’t in the same place at the same time and wants to go to the room. With work and constant communication we made it work out fairly well. I was tired from the travel and hot, so I opted for a nap and most everyone else goes out on a boat dive. A people few opted for the bar, these were the diehard drinkers, and you know there are always a few in every group.
Sunday morning, we are up early, get breakfast and meet our DM for the week. Mine was a little guy named Genie – he was so funny and had eyes that found the littlest critters and he was just the nicest person. He gives us a rundown of where our gear goes, there are slots for each diver and what our diver number is, when to analyze tanks and how many and when the briefings are for each dive. We can do up to 5 dives a day, 2 morning, 2 afternoon and 1 night dive. So, I plan on doing 22 dives this week as the goal.
As I learned, other than trips to the two islands in the distance, all diving is pretty much small reef and muck diving in Dumaguete. At the islands you get walls and reef, no muck diving. We did two island trips, Apo Island and Sijiour Island. On the island trips you only do 3 dives, and you are served snacks between dives and lunch on the boat. At Apo Island, there are shops to visit on the SI and if you look at the rocks, you can see a date carved into the rock. That year is when the first plane came to that island.
Now they have a couple of hundred inhabitants and some even have electricity. They are very happy with their lives there, and as calm and peaceful (no rushing to work, to the store, to hither and yon) as it is, I totally understand their feelings. Sijiour Island has even fewer inhabitants and no shops.
I did do 22 dives, and that included two tries at the Mandarinfish site attempting to get pictures in the coral rubble. I managed to get one picture and not a good one at that , and some video of two mating. The problem is they don’t like light, and if you use light they hide. So, when they finally come out, hopefully it is not too dark to see them, and you can only use the flash on your camera…strobes will scare them off for the rest of the night.
There was absolutely no current at Dumaguete! I loved that, and as far as I could tell, no little stingers either, but I continued to wear the nylon hood just in case. I found I LOVE muck diving! All the little critters, and I got to see flamboyant cuttlefish! I got to see cuttlefish period! I had never seen any before and I was so happy to see them. My squid dance doesn’t work on them, but thinking nice calming thoughts helped me to go nice and slow in their direction and get closer to them than anyone else did. The roughsnout and robust ghost pipefish – they can look like leaves floating in the water, the ornate ghost pipefish are so danged small! I got to see a blue ringed octopus mating, a solitary blue ringed octopus, a mimic octopus (missed getting a picture of this, battery died) and a wunderpuss and so much more! Again, there were so many things to look at I felt that I was having sensory overload on each and every dive.
I will not bore you with a recital of all 22 dives, but again I will provide a list of the sites to which we went:
Daruin North, Daruin South, Ceres, Mandarinfish Dive, Ceres, Ceres, San Miguel North, Mandarinfish Dive, House Reef, Masaplod Norte, San Miguel, Sahara, House Reef, Daruin North, Sahara, Ceres
Apo Island: Chapel, Katipanan, Rock Point West
Sijiour Island: Palton Wall (left shoulder to wall), Palton Wall (right shoulder to wall) and Staghorn
On that last Friday, most of the people went to see the Whale Sharks, a trip that did not guarantee that they would be there (they were) and cost extra. I decided my extra money would go to tips for the people at this resort, they were so nice and helpful and deserved a bigger than normal tip. Instead of doing that whale shark trip, two other people and I went diving – 3 dives that last day. On my last dive of the trip, Ceres, the two guys backed out and I was the only person on the boat, Genie was a wonderful dive buddy and DM. He tried really hard to find a mimic octopus for me, but no luck. He did find another regular octopus and he got inked by it! We did an hour and 17 minutes in the water and I still came up with over 1000 psi. I did not want the dive to end. Unfortunately, my throat felt scratchy and I started to have mucus flow, further, I started sneezing while underwater and I knew I was getting sick.
I got a wonderful massage on Friday night, an hour and a half of pure bliss…and no tight muscles after that!
The Trip Home
Saturday morning, I feel like absolute garbage and I had to retrieve and pack my dive gear, now that it was dry. I also finished packing my clothing and camera gear. Once all packed I went to breakfast and sat well away from everyone else, in order to not infect them. I went back to the room and napped until we were to leave for the Dumaguete Airport.
During the flight to Manila I kept feeling worse and worse. We get to Manila and do the 4 hour layover thing and though I am hungry, it is not for anything on offer at that airport (I wanted some nice chicken soup.) Once we got on the big plane, I found my seat, got my stuff into the overhead and luckily, the two seats between myself and my roommate were never filled. We both used them (she too was feeling ill.) I slept the whole trip – something I never do! Once in LAX, I walked to Terminal E, where United is and checked in. Slept on that flight to Houston. Then had a 2 hour layover in Houston and got on a small regional jet for NOLA. I don’t remember a lot about the walk from the plane at the airport to the Park and Fly bus, but I do remember trying to make sure I did not fall asleep while driving home that Sunday morning. I got to the house and called my mother to let her know I was back safe, but sick. I then called the vet and told them I would pick up my dogs on Monday or Tuesday, because I was too sick to do it that Sunday. I then fell asleep until 9PM. I got up, made a can of soup (chicken) and headed to the bedroom and slept and slept. I called into work on Monday sick – yeah that was good!
Bottomline –
For the whole trip, I got in 40 dives and over 43 hours in the water. The average dive time was one hour and about 5 minutes. I did my 400th dive while at the first resort .
Would I go back to the Philippines – you bet I would. The Philippine people are warm and friendly and the diving is fantastic. The food was very good at each resort and on the last night at each resort we were treated to Philippino Roast Pig – it was so succulent and rich! The time of year was the summer there, and the water was about 84 to 86 degrees and a skin is all you need. I did not see anything larger than turtles, but oh there were so many turtles and they did not run/swim away as they do in the Caribbean. I did not miss seeing sharks or other large fish as there were so many small and interesting critters to see (like the black ribbon eel and the blue ribbon eel and the list goes on and on.) Wonderful diving!!!
