cozcharlie
Contributor
I stopped by the Philippines for 8 nights after a couple of weeks in Raja Ampat (which will be handled in different post under Indo forum).
I stayed at Crystal Blue Resort and was happy with my choice. I had read postive comments regarding CBR on this forum and I also happened to do a Blackwater course with Mike Bartick in Cozumel last summer. Mike is an award winning photographer and is the photo pro at CBR (among other roles, I am not cetain of his exact title). I was quite happy with the staff, the diving, the food, and the accommodations. The food was generally buffet style but I believe you could order eggs/etc at breakfast how you wanted them (I am not really into eggs, so didn't try that). Generally they would have soup, salad, fruit, pasta, vegetables and around 3 proteins every meal (some combination of fish, shrimp, chicken, beef and pork) so it generally wasn't hard to find something you liked.
The hotel staff was very accommodating and eager to help you however possible. Like many resorts in Anilao, the resort is on the side of a hill. My room was about 7 stories above the water, with the dive deck being about 1 story up from the water to avoid tides and wave action, followed by the camera room, the restaurant, the office, what I think were some larger rooms, then finally a two story hotel style building where my room was on the second floor. I was kind of dreading the stairs but actually found them fairly manageable since I usually wasn't running all the way from the water to my room in one shot. My dive gear and the camera equipment stayed near the water the whole time, so I wasn't dragging gear up and down a hill. Obviously if you have a bad knee could be an the stairs could be an issue, but I wouldn't worry too much if your knees are fine but you aren't in great shape (I'm pretty much the opposite of being in good shape and I managed fine). The resort does have people they call to give massages. I had three and they were all quite good. A friend of mine who is a chiropractor had stayed at CBR before and gave the massages a strong recommendation.
I had paid for a private DM, so I had Jerome for my entire stay. He did an excellent job of finding macro critters during the day and he also came out on the two nights I did blackwater dives. The dives were a never-ending stream of macro critters from my first dive to my last dive. While I know there are exceptions to every rule, the resort tries hard to avoid boat/DM swapping. Their goal is to have you dive with the same boat crew and DM every day (which I did, with exception of 1 blackwater dive where Jerome joined me but I was on another boat). I believe they have a max of 4 guests to a boat. The boats are the long, narrow outrigger style boats that are common to the Philippines. They deploy a relatively narrow ramp to help you get on to the boat from the beach, but have two crew making sure you don't lose your balance. They haul all of your camera and dive gear from the boat to the dive deck and back. I was told the resort has a really low staff turnover--it certainly seemed like all of the DMs were good at their jobs. Jerome knew where to look for everything from 2mm wide Medallion crabs, to hairy frogfish, to you name it. He also did a good job of scouting for subjects during the blackwater dives. It is very useful to have a spotter on blackwater dives looking through the water column. You can be very near something and not see it if you aren't looking in the right direction. I happened to be on last blackwater dive with two people on their first blackwater dive. They rolled off the starboard side of the boat and Mike, Jerome and I rolled off the port side. We did an hour-long dive that was fairly uneventful. When I got back in the boat I told the other two divers that blackwater was hit or miss--it turns out they had definitely hit. The rolled off the starboard side practically on top of a whaleshark!! Not certain if they got photos but could definitely see the spots!.
Photos can be found below: They were shot over around 22 dives in 7 1/2 days. I had some sinus and sleep issues so I didn't dive super hard. I happened to be there during the first part of a macro course Mike was conducting with Brook Peterson (her company name is Waterdog Photography and she has a good instagram page if you are looking for someone to follow). It was a good course and the participants were a good group of people. I couldn't stay for the full course because I had to return to the US due to a commitment there.
My photos are below (please note this isn't a hard-culled highlights album, this is just where I store the images I wanted to keep for whatever reason. Ignore the "buy now" link that is just some service that does physical prints which obviously cost money. The digital images should be fully downloadable/viewable for free.
[Anilao March 2024 - CozCharlie]
I stayed at Crystal Blue Resort and was happy with my choice. I had read postive comments regarding CBR on this forum and I also happened to do a Blackwater course with Mike Bartick in Cozumel last summer. Mike is an award winning photographer and is the photo pro at CBR (among other roles, I am not cetain of his exact title). I was quite happy with the staff, the diving, the food, and the accommodations. The food was generally buffet style but I believe you could order eggs/etc at breakfast how you wanted them (I am not really into eggs, so didn't try that). Generally they would have soup, salad, fruit, pasta, vegetables and around 3 proteins every meal (some combination of fish, shrimp, chicken, beef and pork) so it generally wasn't hard to find something you liked.
The hotel staff was very accommodating and eager to help you however possible. Like many resorts in Anilao, the resort is on the side of a hill. My room was about 7 stories above the water, with the dive deck being about 1 story up from the water to avoid tides and wave action, followed by the camera room, the restaurant, the office, what I think were some larger rooms, then finally a two story hotel style building where my room was on the second floor. I was kind of dreading the stairs but actually found them fairly manageable since I usually wasn't running all the way from the water to my room in one shot. My dive gear and the camera equipment stayed near the water the whole time, so I wasn't dragging gear up and down a hill. Obviously if you have a bad knee could be an the stairs could be an issue, but I wouldn't worry too much if your knees are fine but you aren't in great shape (I'm pretty much the opposite of being in good shape and I managed fine). The resort does have people they call to give massages. I had three and they were all quite good. A friend of mine who is a chiropractor had stayed at CBR before and gave the massages a strong recommendation.
I had paid for a private DM, so I had Jerome for my entire stay. He did an excellent job of finding macro critters during the day and he also came out on the two nights I did blackwater dives. The dives were a never-ending stream of macro critters from my first dive to my last dive. While I know there are exceptions to every rule, the resort tries hard to avoid boat/DM swapping. Their goal is to have you dive with the same boat crew and DM every day (which I did, with exception of 1 blackwater dive where Jerome joined me but I was on another boat). I believe they have a max of 4 guests to a boat. The boats are the long, narrow outrigger style boats that are common to the Philippines. They deploy a relatively narrow ramp to help you get on to the boat from the beach, but have two crew making sure you don't lose your balance. They haul all of your camera and dive gear from the boat to the dive deck and back. I was told the resort has a really low staff turnover--it certainly seemed like all of the DMs were good at their jobs. Jerome knew where to look for everything from 2mm wide Medallion crabs, to hairy frogfish, to you name it. He also did a good job of scouting for subjects during the blackwater dives. It is very useful to have a spotter on blackwater dives looking through the water column. You can be very near something and not see it if you aren't looking in the right direction. I happened to be on last blackwater dive with two people on their first blackwater dive. They rolled off the starboard side of the boat and Mike, Jerome and I rolled off the port side. We did an hour-long dive that was fairly uneventful. When I got back in the boat I told the other two divers that blackwater was hit or miss--it turns out they had definitely hit. The rolled off the starboard side practically on top of a whaleshark!! Not certain if they got photos but could definitely see the spots!.
Photos can be found below: They were shot over around 22 dives in 7 1/2 days. I had some sinus and sleep issues so I didn't dive super hard. I happened to be there during the first part of a macro course Mike was conducting with Brook Peterson (her company name is Waterdog Photography and she has a good instagram page if you are looking for someone to follow). It was a good course and the participants were a good group of people. I couldn't stay for the full course because I had to return to the US due to a commitment there.
My photos are below (please note this isn't a hard-culled highlights album, this is just where I store the images I wanted to keep for whatever reason. Ignore the "buy now" link that is just some service that does physical prints which obviously cost money. The digital images should be fully downloadable/viewable for free.
[Anilao March 2024 - CozCharlie]
