Winter Vacation - Puerto Galera, the Philippines 2007/01/11

We didn't have to get up early today, so we stayed in bed until 9 or so. We showered then went and ate breakfast. We were planning on doing the dive together at 12:00, but when we got to the shop we learned that it was a deep dive, and Andrew wasn't trained for it, so we didn't end up going. We went to Sabang to get some lunch and try to book a hotel in Manila for the next night. When we were passing the dive shop on our way back, we learned they had done a dive at Shark Cave, which is exactly what it sounds like. I was slightly miffed I missed it, but I decided I'd just have to come back at some point to do it again.

We went back to do the 3:00pm dive together. We suited up, bought a camera and set off in the boat. We made it to the reef and rolled into the water. Andrew and I were dive buddies, so we stuck together. That and I am better at spotting stuff and pointing it out to Andrew. We saw some lobsters, some cool corals, lots of fish, and someone's lost hat. After this dive Andrew went to change our travellers cheques, double check our hotel reservation, and to see if we could fly out earlier. It took a while to change the travellers cheques, but the people at the office were having a good time. Once he did this, he went and sat at the restaurant and read some old magazines while he waited for me to finish my dive.

About the last dive: it was my night dive, and, surprisingly, I wasn't that worried about. We entered the water just before dark after a briefing on how to use the flashlights and what we were going to be doing. It was a shore dive so getting into the water wasn't too bad. It started to get dark not long after we went under. It was pretty cool to see some polyps out and feeding. We did some skills and then poked around. We saw some pretty cool stuff. A squid was eating a fish; a hermit crab, all the urchins were out and about, and so was a snowflake eel. It was about 2' long, just laying on the substrate. I saw a lionfish too. It was a really neat experience and I'm glad I decided to try night diving. After the dive, we all dekitted and I went pretty fast to get some food. Andrew and I ate some supper, then went to the internet cafe to book a hotel, because our original booking fell through. After this, we went back to our hotel and hit the hay.