My husband and I just completed 6 days of diving with Vibrations Dive Center, staying at Oceans Edge Resort so thought we'd share our review. In a nutshell: Highly recommend for those visiting Boracay or those looking for a new place to dive in the Philippines.
Healthy Reef with a lot of macros, colorful soft and hard corals and always a sheltered dive site: We have dove most of the dive sites in the Philippines including Anilao, PG, Coron and most of the Visayas (Moalboal, Panglao, Dauin, sipalay, etc) and wanted to check out a new area. Carabao didn't disappoint. Despite the bad weather impacting the country, we were still able to dive many of the sites. As you can see from the pictures below, Carabao has the variety of shallow reef, deep walls and the macros you will see in other parts of the Philippines. Including our very first sighting of the Robust Ghost Pipefish! We Didn't get a chance to dive the northern part of the island due to storms in the country, but they sometimes see Mantas, but Cabilao, like many places in the Philippines is really more for macros and beautiful reef.
"Undiscovered" area - Private Diving / No other divers: Since Carabao isn't really well known as a dive destination yet, we were able to go to any of the sites on the leeward side of the island and never had to worry about other divers. There is only one dive shop on the island and although divers staying in Boracay come to some of the Carabao sites, we never saw other divers in the water! in addition to shore diving, we spent most of the time diving from a private boat with the captain, a boatman and the co-owner of Vibrations Dive Center as our guide.
The island is a tiny island with mostly locals so if you want nightlife, Carabao isn't the place to go.
Relatively easy travel to a nice resort and excellent dive op: Carabao Island is an easy 45 minute boat ride from Caticlan / Boracay Airport. Boats leave 3 times a day. We arrived in Manila and spent a couple of nights at Newport / Resorts World by the airport to adjust to the time, rest from the long flight then walked over to Terminal 3 to take a 45 minute flight on Air Asia to Caticlan Airport. A $1 ride on a tricycle to the port then off to Carabao Island.
The resort is really nice with amazing views. There is a restaurant with a good variety of food served (decent price for food despite reviews).
The dive op, Vibrations is ran by a young couple (French/Argentinian). Both are Padi Instructors and were excellent! They are both very focused On safety but are so easy going and fun to dive with and hang out with after dives. I had an issue with my equipment and had to rent theirs for a bit and the equipment was practically brand new! They also helped me fix an issue with my BCD and didn't even bother to charge me.
Healthy Reef with a lot of macros, colorful soft and hard corals and always a sheltered dive site: We have dove most of the dive sites in the Philippines including Anilao, PG, Coron and most of the Visayas (Moalboal, Panglao, Dauin, sipalay, etc) and wanted to check out a new area. Carabao didn't disappoint. Despite the bad weather impacting the country, we were still able to dive many of the sites. As you can see from the pictures below, Carabao has the variety of shallow reef, deep walls and the macros you will see in other parts of the Philippines. Including our very first sighting of the Robust Ghost Pipefish! We Didn't get a chance to dive the northern part of the island due to storms in the country, but they sometimes see Mantas, but Cabilao, like many places in the Philippines is really more for macros and beautiful reef.
"Undiscovered" area - Private Diving / No other divers: Since Carabao isn't really well known as a dive destination yet, we were able to go to any of the sites on the leeward side of the island and never had to worry about other divers. There is only one dive shop on the island and although divers staying in Boracay come to some of the Carabao sites, we never saw other divers in the water! in addition to shore diving, we spent most of the time diving from a private boat with the captain, a boatman and the co-owner of Vibrations Dive Center as our guide.
The island is a tiny island with mostly locals so if you want nightlife, Carabao isn't the place to go.
Relatively easy travel to a nice resort and excellent dive op: Carabao Island is an easy 45 minute boat ride from Caticlan / Boracay Airport. Boats leave 3 times a day. We arrived in Manila and spent a couple of nights at Newport / Resorts World by the airport to adjust to the time, rest from the long flight then walked over to Terminal 3 to take a 45 minute flight on Air Asia to Caticlan Airport. A $1 ride on a tricycle to the port then off to Carabao Island.
The resort is really nice with amazing views. There is a restaurant with a good variety of food served (decent price for food despite reviews).
The dive op, Vibrations is ran by a young couple (French/Argentinian). Both are Padi Instructors and were excellent! They are both very focused On safety but are so easy going and fun to dive with and hang out with after dives. I had an issue with my equipment and had to rent theirs for a bit and the equipment was practically brand new! They also helped me fix an issue with my BCD and didn't even bother to charge me.
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