Diving in the Philippines (Central Visayas) : feed back
Hi everyone,
For those of you interested in the Philippines, and more precisely in the Central Visayas, here is an exhaustive feed back of our recent trip !
All the picture of the trip are there, in the Visayas chapter:
Enjoy !
We spent 15 days in Central Visayas around Bohol, Negros and Cebu
We visited 4 islands :
- Bohol (Alona Beach - Panglao island)
- Negros (Dauin South of Dumaguete)
- Cebu (Moalboal)
- Malapascua (North of Cebu)
Such a trip can only be made in such a short time through Sea Explorers with their excellent offer called "Island hopping".
Sea Explorers own diving centers in 6 different places in the Visayas.
By island hopping they mean spending the vacation on more than one island and not loosing any time transfering from one destination to the next.
Guests have the advantage of diving while transfering between resorts because they are able to do the transfers with their own bancas.
* Arrival in Bohol (Tagbilaran airport)
* Transfer to Sea Explorers Panglao
* Bohol : 2 days diving (Balicasag, Panglao)
* Transfer from Bohol to Negros : diving in Siquijor while transfering
* Negros : 2 days diving (Dauin, Apo Island)
* Transfer from Negros to Moalboal : diving in Sumilon, south of Cebu while transfering
* Moaboal : 2 days diving (Pescador, Moalboal)
* Transfer from Moalboal to Malapascua with a Sea Explorers bus : resting day
* End of stay with Sea Explorers
* Malapascua : 4 days diving with Exotic Island Resort (owned by Dick de Boer, a dutch man)
* Departure from Cebu airport
I. Diving centers
Both diving centers, Sea Explorers and Malapascua Exotic Island were really very good. tidy resorts close to nature, kindness, organisation, professionalism, safety,
no more than 2 divers with one guide, sometimes one guide for me when I wanted to make some particular pictures.
They really deserve the 5* PADI give them for years. In which concerns prices, it is really cheap for european tourists :
you can dive for 16 USD with a package (less than 14 EUR equivalent when we were there !). Food and drinks are really cheap as well
(coke/beer =0,5EUR, 5EUR for a decent diner)
We organised the trip through the internet contacting directly the diving centers and buying international and domestic flights by our own.
Domestic flights were always on time, we were very impressed (... maybe we were lucky !!)
I.1. Sea Explorers service (http://www.sea-explorers.com/)
As I said, the "Island hopping" offer is a real concurrential advantage for this center compared to the competition.
You can really visit different places not loosing time while transfering, and it's very important to move to get a good overview of the Visayas diversity :
black sandy areas, coral gardens, walls, wrecks, sunken islands....
all of them are quite far one from the other... in a one day boat trip you can jump from Bohol to Negros, and from Negros to Cebu.
Sea Explorers (founded more than 10 years ago by german-swiss divers) are excellent : one guide is dedicated to a couple of divers when they arrive, and
will stay with them as far as possible during all their vacation. Thus guests get friends with their guide quite quickly, which is good. The guides were
excellent, especially the local guides. The service was really taylor-made : if one diver wanted to do a particular dive, they arranged to do it, even if he was alone on a boat.
I.2. Exotic Island (http://malapascua.net/)
For the last part of our stay, we decided to try another dive center (even if Sea Explorers have a resort there) : we went to Exotic Island. Why? Just
in order to see something different and benefit from the oldest Malapascua dive center's experience. The dutch owner, Dick de Boer, was a pioneer
in Malapascua. He got aware of the island potential in terms of diving a few years ago especially when he discovered one the very few thresher sharks cleaning
stations in the world. There again, everything was perfect : organisation, taylor-made programs, excellent guides... really the best place we visited in the Visayas,
this island itself is a real paradise
II. Diving
Let's be honest : divers only looking for big stuff will be disappointed in the Visayas.
You can always find one diver who spotted once a whale shark in Moalboal, a manta ray in Malapascua or a hammerhead in Apo Island, but
this encounters are really more and more seldom, as far as "fins hunters" are fishing in the area as everywhere else is South-East Asia.
The only thing you can almost be sure about big stuff, is to meet thresher sharks in Malapascua (even if they disappear sometimes for a few days... unlucky you if you go there in this period)
On the other hand, biological diversity in the Visayas is amazing : corals diversity is stupending, diving spots topography is very different from one place to the other... I mean, it's really first class diving !!. Photographs will definetely love it ! We've been to North Dulawesi last year, and I would say 99,9% of the species we saw in Sulawesi, we saw them in the Visayas... plus a few more!
II.1 Bohol : Alona Beach
Very nice resort and very nice diving spots, especially Balicasag walls. Usually, the place is famous for schools : hundreds of barracudas and jackfishes are spotted there
on a regular basis but we were unlucky. Very nice muckdiving around Panglao (pygmee seahorses, frogfishes, nudis...)
II.2 Negros: Dumaguete
A 30 minutes banca ride leads you to Apo Island. This is a real jewel !! In this marine sanctuary around the small island I probably saw the most beautiful corals
I have ever seen (on an equal footing with Bangka...), huge schools of jackfishes (hundreds, like silvery walls moving... impressive), unbelievable diversity in terms of coral
reef life... definetely one of the best diving place in the Visayas.
Dauin : a "muck diving" mecca ! It made me think of Lembeh Strait (with slightly less diversity), on a black sandy bottom... ghost pipe fishes (ornate and seagrass species), frogfishes, nudis...
II.3 Moalboal
Probably the place we could have skipped : we expected a lot from Pescador Island, which is one of the most famous place in the area, but we were disappointed, maybe
because the visibility was crap. Walls are nice, but not as much as Apo Island's ones in our opinion, and the other spots around are more common.
After a few days in the Visayas, one can be selective !!
II.4 Malapascua
A first class destination !! Monad Shoal and the sight of tresher shark's tail at dawn... unforgettable !
The thresher sharks swim up every morning by 25m depth on this sunken island (a few hundreds square meters) to be cleaned. The probability to see them is very high.
We saw them each time we went diving there (3 times - cf pictures here : http://2a2b.free.fr/2a2b%20Phils_index.htm ). After a good breakfast, you can visit the Dona Marylin. A very nice ferry wreck about 100m long,
laying on the ground by 100 ft depth, covered with soft and black corals. Lots of small stuff settled in, as well as huge marble rays.
Then around Malapascua are a lot of other different sites for "muck diving" or white tip sharks spotting (Gato Island, Light House, House
Reef) : tons of mandarin fishes, seahorses, crustaceas, frogfishes... According to us, Malapascua is THE place in the Visayas.
If one has to choose only one place, this is the one to go
Just a slight detail : they face difficulties fighting against dynamite fishing there... sometimes you can hear blasts underwater...
