Jan 2007

Well, the sun came out. We woke up pretty early, showered, and had breakfast. Andrew went to settle our debts and I went to pack. We then went beachcombing and tidepooling for a while, and also tried to find some souvenirs. After being unsuccessful at finding souvenirs, we made our way back in the direction of our hotel, but not before stopping for ice cream, While eating, we overheard some guy bargaining with a local creep for a girl, with which I was thoroughly disgusted. He wanted a discount because she was apparently looking at other guys, and he didn't want to share. This was a disturbing factor we encountered during our stay was that the two industries in the town were apparently scuba and 'escorts'. It makes your stomach turn.

After this stop, we went back to the hotel for lunch. We ate, finished packing, and went back to the dive shop to wait for our boat and say goodbye to the people we'd met. We got on the boat and headed off to meet the van that would drive us back to Manila. We didn't fear for our lives nearly as much this time, both because it was daylight and because our driver wasn't deranged. We arrived in Manila at our hotel, went through the check-in procedure, arranged a wake up call and went to our room. We then caught some grub after questing for an ATM, then watched some TV and finally got to sleep about 22:30. It was going to be an early morning.

Aside: We didn't get to take as many photos underwater as I would have liked, but some of the other divers had a website where they post their pictures.

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.