Philippines Diving Detour

After realizing there was no way in hell our budget could sustain the damage from diving the outer Great Barrier Reef or even spend 3 weeks in Australia, we made a hasty detour to one of the Asian diving meccas, Philippines. While Asia was not on the proverbial menu for this trip, I'm just too glad to be here where living expenses are minimal and the diving is good and cheap. Arriving to the 11 million inhabitant capital Manila in the middle of the night was exciting. Had almost forgotten what real traveling feels like!

Manila holds little interest for a visitor like us, and early the next morning we hopped on to a bus, rode 3 hours to Batangas (port town infested with touts and pickpockets) and crossed to next island of Mindoro. Located rather close to Manila, its easy access brings in divers, locals and sex tourists. We stayed in Sabang, where most of the diving / girlie bar action is. While the food here isn't anything like the delicacies in Thailand or Vietnam, the reefs are teeming with life and coral is healthy and colorful. As for prices, well, diving costs about 1/3 of what it would be in Australia, and is better than there. Everything else costs about 1/10.

For the next 5 days we dived the nearby waters off Sabang, visiting numerous wrecks, meeting huge turtles and playing with countless nemos of all sorts. They organize trips to a few waterfalls and local villages in the jungle, and we went of course; who'd say no to a day of barbeque & beers by a natural pool under a waterfall. Talking to the resident diving community we got loads of nice tips about where to go next, and started talking to the people at Pandan Island about an Apo Reef visit.

Pandan is a small white sand beach island off the western coast of Mindoro. The beach is decent, not great but not bad, but that's not the reason people go there. The real reason is that the island is the gateway to the Apo Reef, largest atoll in Asia and one of Philippines' best diving spots. 30km off the Pandan island, it is mostly visited by liveaboard boats due to the 2-3 hour trip each way. We managed to get a spot on such a boat and did a 2 day / 1 night trip, clocking 6 dives and a lot of time in the sun on the deck. Weather being very nice and clear the diving was spectacular, reef sharks would come say hi on every dive, turtles were everywhere and schools of big jacks and tunas would surround us constantly. The visibility wasn't at its best but still around 20-30 meters. On the way back from Apo we were greeted by a school of dozens of dolphins, whee!

After returning back north from Apo we'd spend our remaining days in the country diving Isla Verde off Sabang and lazing around in the sun in the brilliant Floating Bar where smoking hot bartenders serve cold lagers & "jungle juice" with a big smile. Cheers to April and Eva! That concludes our Philippines visit. The diving was great, with 10+ different kinds of nudibranches seen, many great new friends met and amazing places visited. Soon it is time to return to Australia to spend cheery St. Patrick's Day with people who stayed back in Darwin during our little escape to Asia!

See all the Philippines photos here!