Cebu Dive Report 9.18-9.20 (Steven King-esque)

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RikRaeder

Contributor
Messages
744
Reaction score
14
Location
Oakland, Ca
# of dives
200 - 499
Mabuhay!
My gf and I just got back from Cebu (Maktan, actually) where we spent a busy three days diving. While in Maktan, we stayed at the luxurious yet affordable Plantation Bay Resort. It's a bit out of the way, but very nice indeed as a place to stay between dives. Room prices are much lower than one would expect, however food and beverages are 30-70% more than what one ("one" being me!) would expect to pay elsewhere (USD 8 for a very yummy cheeseburger, for example). It's a beautiful place with many amenities and I would certainly stay there again (most likely heading into town for cheap grubs). I highly recommend it to anyone who has the means. Hrmmmph.
We dove mostly on local reefs since our operator, El Aquario, was rather a rip off. We got a good package deal on airfare and hotel, and diving for two days. Their proffered prices for day three, however, were about DOUBLE the going rate so we said Sayonara (it caters to Japanese) and went elsewhere for our San Kai Mei (third time).
The weather was fair for the duration of our stay; partly cloudy with thundershowers at night and highs around 30C. Visibility on the house reefs was generally about 10m. The waters around Maktan were about 29C with a noticable yet comfortable thermocline around 15m which dropped the water temperature to about 28C. All of our dives were full service with deckhands doing all transportation, set up, etc. I prefer to set up my own rig, but it got a bit akward trying to battle through them to my gear so I finally put my feet up and relaxed, somehow, although I did make a point to check it all out before each dive. Divers usually disencumber themselves of everything but their wetsuits and hand their gear up to the deckhands before hitting the ladder, but after a couple of times of handling my weight integrated BC, they weren't even available to take my weight pouches after the second dive. Woe is me!
On the plus side for El Aquario, the bancas (outrigger boats) were not too crowded and the groups were nice and small; we maxed at four divers/dm and one day the gf and I had the whole boat, dm, three deckhands and captain all to ourselves. The guides were also very good at spotting interesting stuff and obviously knew the waters quite well. We averaged 45-50 minutes a dive (never less than 45).
Our first dive was at "Kontiki." Conditions were as above and we saw a pleothera of sea life, including a sea snake; very graceful, very beautiful. We drifted along a drop off at around 20m in a mild current and sighted many puffers of varying types, some Schultz's Pipefish, and my favorite, the seasnake (in the shallows).
After a short interval, we motored for about 10 minutes to "Marine Station" and explored at around 13m. Upon decending to the bottom, I saw an invisible fish! I don't know what to call it. It was boxy and small, maybe 5cm long. It had the basic composition of a jellyfish, but was definitely fish shaped (sans noticible fins or facial features). It seemed to have a proportionately large mouth that was working constantly open and closed. My guide looked at me like I was crazy when I asked about it, but I studied it for at least a minute before I had to catch up with my group. I know what I saw. The truth is down there!! Little help here? Anyone?
We also saw some sort of burrowing, yellow shrimp doing housecleaning on it's hole. That was fun to watch. Of course I didn't take my camera for the first day since I'd decided to focus on familiarizing myself with my new gear. Well, those are the breaks.
Our third dive was at "Coral Reef". Conditions were as per usual in the shallows, where our last two dives of the day took place (around 13m). The bottom was grassy with patches of white sand and there were some interesting rock formations and later corals developing as the gentle downslope led to deeper waters then a drop off. Shortly after submerging, we saw another yellow and black sea snake. We admired it from a distance, then swam from 5m to 13m depth to explore some more.
Believe it or not, the snake followed us! More specifically, it followed me!! Looking back after a few kicks, I saw it moving along with our group, which I was trailing. The next time I looked back, there it was still! We'd moved about 20m from where we first sighted it and when we stopped, it stopped, reared up a bit, and looked right at me from about 3m away. I got a bit nervous, but wasn't worried, yet. I sure did regret not having my camera, though. We were next to a large rock formation that overhung the sandy bottom slightly. As the rest of the group was eyeing this or that, I was keeping half an eye on our new companion. I was relieved when it headed under the overhang of the large rock. I'd decided that maybe we had spooked it, so it had moved to it's favorite hiding place. Yeah. That's it! It was hiding from us.
When we moved away, I looked back and the damned thing had swum around under the overhang and was once more following ME! It came to within nipping distance of my fin when I turned on the juice and got out of there. Turning again to look from about 5m distant, I saw that our guide was on his knees on the bottom pointing something out. I admit, I hadn't seen much of what he was showing since the blasted serpent decided to mess with my head. The snake had left me for the guide and I watched aghast as it swam between his legs from behind, then turned 90 degrees about 20cm from his nose. He tapped it in the mid-section gently with his probe and it took off. Geeze, did I feel brave.
Towards the end of our dive, as I was enjoying an unusual day of unusually good neutral buoyancy I got a big suprise. I was zooming over a sandy patch and looked down and back between my legs to check the effect of my frog kick just centimeters over the pristine bottom. As I looked up again, no doubt with quite a smug look on my face, I felt a burning sensation across my top lip. It continued to my right cheek and thereafter immediately along my bottom lip. I got my hand up fast to wipe away whatever it was but too late. The discomfort became pain and I almost gave up on the dive but it stopped getting worse, and was only agonizing. The best I can guess is that I took some kind of box jelly under the nose and it wrapped itself around my regulator mouthpiece. Note to self: don't kiss the box jelly. My gf took a hit in the neck, but hers wasn't so bad. Another diver got it in the hand and he was red and swollen the next day. Fortunately, my gf and I had no evidence of being stung and the pain receeded in a couple of hours.
Day 2 we dove "Greenhouse" to 24m, and "Tambuli" to 15m. Our Philippino guide, Oempa (Oompa) had great eyes and was really friendly, although his Japanese was much better than his English. My gf and I had the banca (plus dm, captain, and three deckhands) to ourselves since the other four Japanese divers had paid the 80 USD each to hit the nearby Helotongon Sanctuary. Again, walldiving at the 20m drop off followed by explorations of the shallows.
I've heard that the reefs around Maktan aren't so great, but conditions are good and there is an abundance of life in many varieties. Locations require a short boat ride, the water was very smooth, and there seems to be a nice wall running along the west side of the island.
We finished day two by rejoining our companions from day one at "Parker", diving to around 12m and enjoyed the same conditions and denziens as have been mentioned above. Parker is just off of El Aquario's locale and required a two-minute boat ride with a one-minute return trip. After our exit, the boat moved maybe 100m towards shore, then dropped anchor. The divers were sitting around waiting to be taken to the jetty as I dropped off the bow into about 70cm of water and waded 100m ashore. They finally caught on after I had my suit off and was cracking a beer on Aquario's veranda. I guess the boat diving specialty wasn't included in their AOW course.
While the operator offered the usual Japanese style prices, our erstwhile dive companions were uncommonly friendly, non-xenophobic, and weren't strutting around like they owned the joint. While one did carry a bit of a swagger since they were the AOW class, he was bearable (like a box jelly to the face). After all, with a whopping 25 dives to his credit, who could blame him. It was probably due to all those dives that he couldn't remember what specialties he'd worked on at the end of the day. Overall, it was a good group.
Another unexpected suprise was that my gf actually had pretty good control over her buoyancy and, dare I say it, trim! While she wasn't exactly Jaques Cousteau, neither was she a danger to herself and others, nor was she Ginger Rogers on the reef. Hurray for me! Maybe that was one of the things that made Cebu so enjoyable (besides the good conditions, beautiful hotel, daily massages which really made her butt, tsuru tsuru, or smooth). <--she wanted me to write that
 
We took our third day with Scubaworld and I was very impressed with them. Not only were their prices competitive (about half of El Aquario's) but they really worked with me on setting up our dive at the last minute and also had a great guide; Cacoii (that means "cool" in Japanese...Fonzie cool, not cold cool). We had a banca and crew to ourselves, again! We hit the sanctuaries at Nalasuon and Helotongan after a 30-minute boat ride. The water here was clearer and bluer with visability extending to maybe 20m max.
At Nalasuon we did a wall to 25m and saw some really big fish there. There were also some small, assorted schools including baracuda. We saw two Eagle Rays circling around the bottom of the wall, maybe around 45m. It was too far and dark for my camera to reach, but we could see them from 25m as they swooped in over the white sandy bottom around the base of the wall. Our guide Paulo (aka Cacoii) said it was his first time ever to see Eagles there. In the shallower waters above the drop off, we saw oodles of blue tipped stingrays flitting around.
While I was taking pictures of something or other, I noticed Paulo jabbing his finger and indicating I should turn around. Although I was looking and hoping to see sharks around the base of the wall, it never occured to me that I was in danger. It turned out to be much worse! Upon turning, I saw a hefty Trigger Fish just hanging out around 3m behind me. Taking the opportunity to snap a photo, I was soon in a desperate struggle as the thing charged me, grazing my camera.
I soon found myself fighting for my life to avoid it's uncannily human looking front teeth as it made pass after pass at me and tried to circle around behind me for what must have been the killing bite. It was fun swirling around, trying to keep my back from it as it circled and nipped at me. I considered it a good opportunity to practice maneuvering with fins only, maintain my depth, and get a few pictures. Although a novice diver still, I was pretty happy with my performance as I fought to the death with this gruesome ghoul of the deep. I had to ward it off with my camera and fins a couple of times, and now have a few tooth marks on the fins, but came out of the ordeal none the worse for wear. After a few minutes, I powered away as it turned for yet another run on me from 8m off. Although it pursued for a bit, I think we had both had enough. I used up a lot of air at that depth, exerting myself so, but still managed to get a full dive after signaling my condition to Paulo. My consumption dropped off as I relaxed again and we moved back up to 8m depth. I hit the boat with about 30bar/400psi.
Our last dive was at Shangri-La where we did a nice drift at around 20m including a cool drifting safety stop. We saw many Frog Fish and a sunken wave runner (does that count as a wreck dive?), plus all the usual suspects. After 45 minutes of tooling around and drifting, we popped up three or four kilometers from our entry point which was in front of Scubaworld's resort in the shadow of the Shangri-La hotel.
The boats, crews, and guides in my experience were uniformly excellent. Among the fish mentioned, there were also many Lionfish, Dwarf Lionfish, at least one Stonefish (but you can never tell with those crafty *******s), huge Butterfly fish, clouds of Purple Queens, Puffers of many types, a Clouded Moray, Pipefish...tons of life. I really liked the abundant and varied coral formations both hard and soft as well. I'll be heading to Subic this winter which I hear is not so beautiful, but hey! They've got wrecks galore there (lots of waverunners?). I also plan to spend a couple of days on Bohol, near Cebu which I hear is even better.
My opinion: While I wouldn't recommend or return to El Aquario, Scubaworld gets kudos for service and organization. Next time I might even stay at their resort if I can get into one of the few units there. I'm saving my yennies for Plantation Bay because hey: sometimes "...it's good to be the king." Diving in the Philippines is indeed great! They speak English (mostly), the food is nice, the people are good...wait....food good, people nice...the conditions are superior to good (great in Bohol I hope) it's only four hours from me (sorry US residents :wink:) huge variety, and best of all the prices are right! I certainly give Philippine diving a thumbs down! (Divers: you know what I mean)
 
happy to know that you enjoyed our little bit of paradise there in Cebu :) by the way so you may record it accurately in your logbook its MACTAN
 
Nice report...hehehe... Glad you had a good time... don't ya just love those Filipino triggers!!! During my adv. nitrox course in PG, we accidentally swam over a trigger's nest. Next thing you know I hear and feel this clunk on my twin tanks. Turn around to see a big trigger ready to make another run for me but was able to bat it away with my fins. Sneaky bast..ds... They do love to get you from behind...

if you thought plantation bay was luxury, stay over at Shangri la... :wink: (personally I didn't like PB)
 
that was a very detailed report. :). very nice. :)

yes, take pyro's advice, try amanpulo. :wink:
 
Dang, $80USD for Hilutungan? Those tourist got ripped off big time. Anyway, great trip report. Mactan diving is mediocre at best and the only ones worth going to, are Hilutungan and Nalusuan. You'd have to go to Moalboal, Malapascua or Bohol for decent diving.
 
yea, but Mactan is a great start to coral reef diving. If Rik went on to dive all the best spots first, he'd never appreciate the not so well known sites. :)

Great trip report rik. Yea, I reco to try staying at shang, see how you like it there. I also reco to try diving with Liquid Assets. They're cheap and have the biggest and best bangka's out there. And good to hear the luggage turned out fine! Tusa's your Finnish cousin right? :)
 
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