Wandering Scotsman

I did another boat dive at Chocolate Islandat 1030 this morning.  This one had a niceer entrance as the wind which had challenged my sleep last night had died down a bit.  We did a two way dive against, tehn with the current.  Nothing too great, but we did see Mantis Shrimp, several nudibranches and a ‘wiggly arsed fish’….which translated into a juvenile Many Spotted Sweetlips boogying its way along the coral.  I think there was a seahorse as well.

Later on after some more homework we headed off for a night dive.  The main objective of this dive was to see some fish making out. Again we descended to the coral, and sat around carefully on the seabed around the Mandarin fish.  I felt like I was intruding, waiting there for the equivalent of a fish porn movie.  Heck we were even taking photographs – the poor bugger should have just been left in peace to have their wicked way with each other.  We watched the court each other, chasing each other through the coral.  They got frisky, the raised up from the coral, bob’s your uncle, then you see a wodge of fish sperm and eggs drifting to the seabed, all in the spotlight of a few dive torches.  Bloody perverts we are!  This National Geographic artical describes the mating ritual of the Mandarin fish.

We eventually left them to it and carried on the dive which turned out to be an excellent one.  Before the circus when we met another group, we saw three seahorses (I spotted one myself!), two of which were pretty much free swimming.  We also saw some crabs, shrimp (including another Mantis), scorpionfish,  and the highlight for me – a frogfish walking along the coral on the seabed (yes, I’m real – fish with ‘legs’ that walk).

Unfortunately my pictures were pretty bollocks.  A lot to learn with this bloody expensive, heavy, plastic camera case!

Met a guy today on one of the dives – in his 50’s, retired at 43, been here since he did his PADI in December, and travelling around Asia until ‘whenever’.  Hmm….maybe I should’ve listened to my Dad’s advice after all……

Well I’ve realised I’ve spoiled myself a bit in the first year of my diving.  Philippines, yes, and yes again. Perhentians, yes.  Cambodia(?!), yes.  Sipadan, oooooh yes!  And here I am back in the Philippines, but in Malapascua Island.  I descended the mooring line around 7am in a big swell, strong surface current, and a relatively poor visibilty.  I descended 23 metres, moved a wee bit and plunked my booty down on the top of Monad Shoals just sitting there.  And sitting there.  It felt bizarre, we were laying low, and watching out into the deep blue beyond, distracted by the odd boxfish and lionfish (yawwwwwn – as I said, I’m spoiled).  We decided to make a move.

Two minutes later it was all worth it.  As usual I’m looking along the bottom, then a little nudge alerts me of the whopping great Thresher Shark over to our left, gigantic swooping tail gracefully cutting through the water.  It was all worth it.  Too quickly, it buggered off with better things to do.  This dive site is a cleaning station for the sharks, so you sit, wait, and hope one will come along, and get (ahem) sucked off by a wrasse cleaning bits off of it.

We bumped into another bunch of divers, so we waited by the wall dropping hundreds of feet below us in the bluest darkest depths.  Minutes later, another Thresher came towards us, and I had visions of it swimming right above our heads.  Unfortunately it decided to turn away beforehand, and tease me to dive again tomorrow morning.  If you look (really!) closely you can just make them out!

Thresher in the distance :

Thresher in the deep blue :

A Thresher’s tail : 

Scoropionfish (Yaaaaawn, but a nice picture) :

Well I got up at the crack of dawn (0530!) – the earliest for a long, long time, but hey, like the last early morning it was so that I could go diving.  Not exactly the end of the world!

Missing the Manila rush hour, it only took me 20 minutes and 80 pesos (around 80p) to get to the domestic terminal.  In rush hour, that could be over an hour easily…  So I had a long wait around.

Doing my usual and taking the absolute piss with my hand luggage allowance (laptop, DSLR, lenses, compact camera, magazine, books, underwater housing, strobe, mask, snorkel….oh and the odd bit of clothing), I checked in with no hold luggage!  What a great feeling.

I had taken a taxi without even leaving the terminal, negotiating a fiver off the 3 hour trip from Cebu airport to Maya port on the North East of Cebu Island.  The taxi driver stopped to check the way with the locals several times, and got a shocker as he hit the less paved sections of road at a fair lick (I could tell when he yelled, and I woke up).  We passed some real local places, trucks overloaded with sugar cane, and we finally hit the port where the ‘banca’ boats would take us to the island – the only place I’ve seen with a petrol station right on the ‘beach’.

Again, it was negotiating time.  A local offered me a boat for 1000 pesos (‘No other customers – private boat’).  ‘No way’ – too much.  For a moment I thought he had me by the bollocks – I had to get 8km across the water, and it was rough.  I stood around long enough to see the others waiting, watching the locals take the catches of the day off the boats.

Catch of the Day!

I then spotted a couple of Exotic Resort t-shirts.  A quick intro, and I got the boat across with them and their supplies for 50 pesos, saving me 9 pounds 50 pence…only I didn’t have to pay that either.  With a quick transfer of 20 pesos to the small boatmen (boatmen of small boats, not physically small men!),it was onto the Exotic Resort banca boat.  It was an interesting crossing.   Unlike the paradise conditions I hoped for and expected, it was cloudy, and ‘blowing a hooly’ (a.k.a. very windy), with large swells and waves.  We were all quite damp on our arrival at the island.

Transfer boats:

I checked into my room, the only thing making it worthy of the $21 being that it was on the beach.  Yes, the only thing seperating me from the sea was a palm tree, a couple of mini banca boats, and 10m of white soft sand.  I then went to book my Nitrox and Deep Dive course, as discussed over email and the phone (‘No problem, sort it out when you get here’).

A similar banca to the Exotic one.

‘Sorry, we can’t do that – our instructor is in the city’.  Pissed off, I strolled down to Thresher Shark Divers who were more than happy to oblige with the Nitrox course, but recommended I should leave it at that.  With a complete disregard to the cost I had some homework for the evening, a PADI folder, a couple of bits of plastic depth/exposure tables, and a hefty book for my mum to take home from Manila.

Beach arrival :

My bungalow 🙂