ongtzeyaw
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Registered: 12/20/03
Posts: 10
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Reply with quote | #1 |
It's Andrea's brother again.... Back with another lengthy trip report. I hope I don't bore you too much while I try to share with my experiences and perspectives of diving Philippines. Here goes...
I recently returned from The Philippines and the dives there are fantabulous!!! I spent 4 days diving in Puerto Galera. It is a small diving town north of the province of Mindoro which is the island south of Manila. The thing that I dreaded most was the land travel in Philippines. What could have been a 2 hour transfer from Manila International airport to Batangas to board our boat ride to Puerto Galera, took 4 hours thanks to the delay out of Singapore. The delayed flight got us in an hour later than the scheduled arrival hence we were caught in the morning rush hour traffic.
In order to avoid further delays, our driver decided to take the side roads which were quite the scenic route. We travelled up the volcanic mountain of Taal (pronounced as "tah ahl"). What makes this volcano unique is the lake within the caldera and the peak of the volcano still active, sitting in the middle of the lake. There are boats that will take you to the center of the lake, hike or horse-back ride your way up to view the bubbling waters within the volcano. I'm not really a big fan of volcanoes so I won't bother to recap all my geography lessons for the proper volcano anatomy names. It's too hot enough being in Singapore, I think I'll pass on the volcano for a second visit. It's good enough a view from the distance.
As we meandered through the windy mountain roads of Taal, it was a good sign to see more rural settlements and countryside activities. It means we're getting further away from crazy Manila and closer to Batangas.
We arrived one of the many beaches of Batangas to board our outriggers. The boatmen wasted no time in grabbing all our bags and loaded up the outriggers in a blink. Then we were off to Puerto Galera. 
We finally arrived Frontier Scuba dive center!! Phew!!! We checked into our rooms, grabbed all our dive gear and gathered for our first and very well deserved dunk into the water. Check-out dive is at Monkey Beach - an easy, quite dive site. It wasn't exactly so. There were multiple sightings of peacock mantis shrimps, garden eels, an abundance of dorid nudibranchs, schools of longfin batfish, cowfish and long-nose hawkfish, among many beautiful hard and soft corals. Good thing nothing too spectacular at Monkey Beach as I never dive with my camera in the housing on the first dive.
Most of the divers sat out the first night dive.... slackers!!!  The hard core addicts, of course, needed more nitrogen fix. Night dive at Sabang Reef was more than what I could ask for. There was so much to see, throughout the dive, I would look back and I could see patches of lights all over the sandy bottom; everyone was doing their own thing, scrutinizing the strange critters they found. What blew me away was my first sighting of a bobtail squid. By the time it got to my turn to see the little cutie, it had already coated itself with sand. Looking like it was ready for deep frying, the squid would burrow itself in the sand and sweep more sand over itself to complete the camouflage. Awesome!!!
The next 3 days of diving keeps getting better and better. We had a small gorgonian seafan, home to 4 pygmy seahorses (hippocampus bargibanti) with one pregnant male and a new-born that was no more than a centimeter plus tail. Then we were delivered our regular-sized Thorny seahorses after the miniature ones. Sea moths, loads of nudibranchs, huge trevalies, oriental sweetlips, snappers, emperor fish, ornate ghost pipefish, spearer mantis shrimp, anemone fish eggs, crinoid squat lobsters, porcelain crabs, humongous gorgonian seafans, barrel corals, octopus, sunflower corals... I'll stop before I run out of space. Anyways, you get the picture.
As always, before we know it, time's up. 4 days were over and we had to stop coz we were flying off to Legaspi for our second leg of the tour. Legaspi was where we needed to get to for our Whale Shark Interaction at Donsol.
"Butanding" is the local name for whale sharks. Donsol is also known as the Whale Shark Capital of the World due to the congregation of whale sharks every year starting from January to late May. On the worst day, you would still be able to see at least one whale shark. And that is all I ask for. Just one!!! I don't ask for much; I'm not greedy... Just one!!!
So we traveled back to Manila to catch domestic flight which we almost missed. This time, it wasn't due to bad traffic. Thanks to Cebu Pacific airlines for overbooking their flights, I was told 9 of my divers were to be offloaded to the next day's flight. Trying not to create a scene, I calmly (if you've seen my sister blow her top, you should know that it runs in the blood. Hehehe!) told the ground staff to go back to control and find 9 diver passengers to offload or else she'll have a lot more to deal with than an overbooked flight. I was so ready to chew her head off if she messed up my group's trip. She scrambled up and down the check-in counters almost in tears and finally bumped off 9 poor souls for my group to all fly as scheduled.
After that fiasco, we arrived Legaspi with a picturesque view of Mount Mayon - the highest active volcano in Philippines. After an hour of coach ride, we had an orientation at the Donsol Tourism office and checked into Woodland Resort. The anticipation was just killing everyone, especially me. I have been planning a trip to Donsol for the past 3 years and it never happened until now. We all turned in for an early night.
We were all armed with our cameras, snorkeling gear and all set for our first interaction trip. The wait is finally over. I'm going to see my first whale shark! All geared up, sweating in the heat and eagerly waiting for the spotter to cue the BIO (Butanding Interaction Officer). An hour had past and we still had not seen any whale sharks. We started getting restless and consoling each other if we don't see it, we still have another shot at it tomorrow.
Then the BIO grabbed his fins and mask and shouted to us "Stand by!!! Right side". As soon as he gave that command, we were all ready to jump. Then he shouted "Go!! Go!! Go!!" This was it!! My first whale shark. Within a split second, we missed it and the BIO told us all to get back to the boat quick. Again, within less a minute, all 5 of us on the boat was back onboard in a blink.
Then within the next 10 min, we were back into the water. The BIO led us to where the whale shark was swimming towards us but with the murky, green water, none of us could see anything except his fins. The BIO signaled to stop and look down. I did exactly as told. Straining my eyes and trying not to let it play tricks on me. I still didn't see anything. Just when I was about to stick my head out of the water to see if the BIO had another cue, appearing from the green mist was this HUGE head!!! Stoked, I forgot to breathe. I gasped for air as I watched the 10m whale shark cruise by me. When I snapped out of it, I finned like crazy to the head and dived down for a shot. Heart was racing so much I couldn't stay down long enough.
Words really could not describe the emotions of being so close to a living, breathing creature of this size. It was a dream come true. Back on the boat after our first whale shark, we could still feel the adrenaline rushing through our veins. Unbelievable!!! We spent about 5 hours out there with a few more sightings of 2 more sharks. By lunch time, it started to shower a bit. WIth limited sunlight, it was almost impossible for the spotters to catch even a glimpse of the whale shark shadows on the surface. So we decided to head for shore to check out the Donsol town and try again tomorrow.
The next day was more fruitful. We had 12 sightings of 3 different sharks with one particular shark was actually basking on the surface! After that excitement, we had to head back to shore, to end our trip.
We all left with a heavy heart, wishing we had more time with the whale sharks.....
Follow this URL for pictures:
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/563218840ubJqfp
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