Cebu

11th Dec 2010, Malapascua, Philippines

9am for the first dive. We headed towards Lighthouse, the site of hull of a Jap WWII wreck, just 10m deep. We didn’t get a chance to do the dive sites at Gato Island, which was 45 minutes boat ride out. There needed to be at least 4 of us before they could take us there. Nevertheless, the next best alternative at the Lighthouse was a pretty good one. After all, we were getting one bangka boat to ourselves, with a 2 DM to 3 divers ratio.

Dive 4: Lighthouse. Hard corals, long dive since it was only 10m deep. Dive 5: Deep slope, which is a semi-wall dive, my favourite kind. The sheer amount of nudibranches spotted was enough to keep me happy all day. A moray roaming the slope was icing. Dive 6: Lighthouse (night). We returned back to Lighthouse for a dusk dive, ready to spot the elusive mandarinfish, a colourful fish that shies away under hard coral. They come out only at night, and since they fit into the palm of your hand, you can imagine how hard it is to find one in the water at night. Our DM Jojo was the hero, finding a mandarinfish almost immediately at the beginning of the dive. Additionally, he also found plenty of seahorses, a first for me in over 50 dives. Crabs, hermit crabs, cuttlefish and more boxer shrimps made up the night party.

Dinner was at one of the beachfront restaurants. Dishes were around the 150-300 range, fairly reasonable. There was an absence of local type eateries here in Malapascua, since most of the food is home cooked for the family. I had adobo, which is any mean cooked with vinegar and what seems like soy sauce.

10th Dec 2010, Malapascua, Philippines

At 430am, we were up and about, getting ready for the pre-dawn dive, in order to catch a thresher shark sighting. The dive location is Monad Shoal, a sunken island, on whose plateau the trhresher sharks regularly hang out. They come out from the depths to this plateau to get cleaned by the cleaner fish, before going back down. It’s one of the few places to see threshers, characterised by their long dorsal tail fin that grows to almost half their entire body length.

We were hoping we’d get lucky. There’s a 55% chance of seeing one this time of year, according to the Evolution Dive owners, Matt and David. Our DMs were Jojo and Julius, both born and bred on Malapascua island. The conditions that morning at 5am were unfavourable. Morning torrents and choppy waters. We’d be cursing if we don’t see the threshers today; as it meant we’d have to go out again tomorrow morning in the cold rain to try again. We hear stories of divers who come here and dive for a week daily without ever spotting a thresher shark.

We weren’t disappointed. A huge 2m plus thresher was in the vicinity and swam round in circles, at one time turning towards me and coming within a few meters away. Stupidly, i forgot to bring down the underwater camera, and only had it passed to me later, by which time I only got fleeting shots of the shark. Ok, I’m content. Mission accomplished. Thresher shark spotted.

The next couple of dives saw us spotting various local stuff like a frogfish, pairs of banded boxer shrimps, lots of lionfish. Dive 2: Lapus Lapus. Dive 3: Bantingi.

In the evening after the dives, did a loop around the village that sits behind all the dive resorts. It’s my first Filipino village experience, and it delivers. Despite the resorts catering to the dive crowd, life in Malapascua remains simple. Children play in the sand, neighbours crowd outside a house, peeking in to watch the television in the household. Videokes abound too, you can hear the singing (wailing!) from the villagers belting local and foreign chart toppers. Malapascua’s changing though. More resorts are popping up, structures are being built as I was there, no doubt to capture the increasing tourist dollar. Come to Malapascua now, before it’s all gone in 10 years time =)

And the highlight, besides the sharks, here’s a video of the Malapascuan village kids dancing away, the last shot in the vid sees one kid pulling the other’s pants down =)

If you don’t see the Youtube video, go to the original source : http://furiouspanda.blogspot.com

9th Dec 2010, Malapascua, Phillipines

AirPhile Express’ A320 fleet flies out of Changi Terminal 2, Singapore, its first international destination to Manila and Cebu City. Armed with cheap promo tickets, off we go, T, ZJ and I to Cebu. The destination? Malapascua Island, off the northern tip of Cebu. The agenda? Thresher sharks.

As soon as we got out of the Cebu / Mactan international airport, we were whizzed into a van, to take us direct to Maya at the northern end, where we will take the pumpboat to Malapascua. It was a 3 hour van ride, which seemed longer because of the rain, and also due to the fact that it gets dark here much earlier, at around 6. The road hugs the eastern coastline.

Here’s the view from the pumpboat. I suspect the cross-like mast is intentional, seeing that the majority of Filipinos are Roman catholics.

Dive outfit that we went with is Evolution Dive, one of the newer dive cos. on the malapascuan dive scene. And they put us up at The Purple Snapper, a 5 minutes walk inland from Evolution. Tomorrow morning, we will wake up at 4am, to go out to spot thresher sharks at Monad Shoal, since this is the only time when they come out.