Had two completely awesome days of diving on Malapascua island just north of cebu. Took the bus up there from cebu. When I got to the northernmost town of cebu, Maya, the banca drivers wanted to charge me 400p while the rest of the filipinos would pay just 50p. I said no way and decided to wait it out. Well as good luck has it, I saw three westerners and asked them how they were getting there. They were actually interns and volunteers with the thresher shark research and conservation project and the research boat was coming to pick them up, so after I asked the head researcher if it was ok, I got a free ride (and free beer) over to the island. Bret was a hilarious australian who did envrionmental consulting until he lost his job with the economic crisis and Jessie and Matt were aquatic biology students from CU-boulder working on their required thesis they have to write to graduate. Interestingly Jessie had grown up in bellingham and knew baker well but now lives in aloalua when not in school and knows the windlers.
The first morning I got up at 4:30 to start the dive at 5 to look for the thresher sharks, but the other divers showed up really late, so we didn't get out until 6:30 and didn't see any sharks. I had originally planned to just do 2 dives here as per my budget, but I really wanted to see the thresher sharks as they're highly endangered and this is really the only place you can have a chance of seeing them, and this french guy dennis that I met was just raving about how this was the best diving around and convinced me to do some more dives. The 2nd dive of the day was out to Lapus Lapus island. It was a sweet dive, saw a lot of cool things and difficult to find things including 3 frogfish (2 different species) and a pygmy seahorse.
After the second dive I did a circumnavigation of the island on foot. There were some nice beaches and at the far end, the village kids were more than happy to show me to the lighthouse and then to a pretty high cliff to jump off of.
That night I did the sunset and night dive as well. What an amazing dive! Saw so many unique and interesting critters. Lots of lionfish and stonefish and loads and loads of the infamous Mandarin fish (beautifully colored fish) and even got to see several of them mate, which is one of the more sought after thing in diving. The male, which is about twice as large, takes the female under his pectoral fin and then they swim out above the coral together arm in arm. It's quite cute really. Also saw a large seahorse which I really wanted to see. I think seahorses are great, but I've never seen them in the wild except for the 2 pygmy seahorses on this trip, but they're so small they're tough to get a good look at. And saw some other cool things like 4 cuttlefish, flounders, fast walking sea stars, anenome and coral shelled crabs.
The next morning we got up early again to look for the thresher sharks. This time I put down the ultimatum that if people weren't there by 5am, we were leaving them. This time we were the first boat there and got to see two thresher sharks up close getting cleaned and we got to observe for quite some time. The sharks are pretty sweet b/c they have huge eyes and this incredibly long arched tailfin.
I took the rest of the morning easy and just read in a hammock by the beach before my 2nd dive. For the 2nd dive we went out to Gato island where we got within feet of sleeping white tipped sharks, saw a very rare harlequin ghost pipefish, and to my great excitement saw 4 sea snakes! The dive area itself was pretty cool. Lots of caves, giant boulders, canyons, the steep wall of the island and some of the best soft coral diversity I have seen. The area reminded me of something from a Dr. Seuss book.
I really liked the island. Beautiful white sand beaches with nice blue water. Some cool local fishing villages to explore and now cars or tricycles on the island. The power was only on from 6pm to 11pm and it was the hottest nights of sleeping so far as my place didn't have a/c or even a fan. I met a cool guy named jamie who grew up in the philippines but now lives in the finger lake area of ny. He and two of his filipino friends bought me lunch one day and the next day treated me to a huge breakfast of sausage, eggs, fish, and rice. The last night I treated myself to an eat all you can place on the beach on the tourist side (I always ate in the local village before that) complete with fresh grilled barracuda for only 4 bucks.
Today I read a bit on the beach and then took the ferry back to Maya. A couple korean guys invited me to share a taxi back to cebu city, but I said I'd take the bus b/c it was too expensive. A few minutes later they came and got me and said they had hired the taxi and I should just come along for the free ride. They wouldn't let me pay for even a little bit.
back in cebu city was a frustrating experience b/c on malapascua everyone had said there were ferries from cebu to manila everyday (my lonely planet said this as well), but when I got here it appeared there were ferries everyday but sunday, which is the day I need to leave in order to get to manila in time to catch my flight back to bangkok. So I spent all day walking around and walking around some more to different travel agents and ferry companies to find something. Doesn't look promising, so I might have to bite the big bullet and book a flight to get to manila on time. There's a potential cargo only ship that leaves at 5am that I might be able to get on. That means I need to leave here at 4am at the latest to be to the pier, but my watch broke on malapascua so I have no alarm, so I will likely have to stay up all night b/c if I fall asleep there is no way I'll wake up in time. argghh
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