Living in the Middle East I have two major public holidays Eid Al Fitr after Ramadan and Eid Al Adha after Haj. The Hijara calendar moves approximately 10 days forward compared to the Gregorian one over a year as it is a lunar calendar. The problem here is that planning trips to the Philippines at the moment based on these holidays is pushing them into the local monsoon season. Last year I arrived a week after a severe typhoon that partially wrecked part of Asia Divers jetty over on Puerto Galera. This year I arrived slap bang into a typhoon and the drive from Manila Airport to Makati took over two hours.
I was half thinking that I should have gone back to Lembeh instead.
Anyway by Sunday morning the sun was shining and I was heading down to Anilao.
The resort is still as good as it was last year, no noticeable major changes, food wholesome and plenty of it.
After lunch I started with a shore dive with Edgar, with whom I dived last year, nice to be back in the water after a six week dry spell, and it was warm too
From Monday I was diving with Norwell, and all dives with him were 80+ minutes, with the longest dive at 103 minutes in Secret Bay. By far my favourite site is Bethlehem over on Maricaban Island, half of my dives were at this site, and Norwell seemed to find mainly stuff less than 1cm in size, I had to mention to him that I like to photograph larger nudis too, so difficult to shoot with the 105mm lens and the +10 diopter and focus on these rhinophores, and it was certainly a pleasure to see a Risbecia tryoni or Chromodoris magnifica and photograph them too. I had my own boat and DM for the week, and plan to repeat this on my next trip back to CB, all that is required is a bit more sustenance for the SI.
There was a US couple from San Diego, Bob and Theresa, who arrived later on Sunday and they had already booked Edgar for the week. On Tuesday there was the Malaysian Invasion, with 20 people arriving and CB was running four boats daily to accommodate them, this also filled up the camera room too.
I have about 10+ new species of nudibranch (to me) to identify and will have my head in the books and on nudipixel over the next few days.
Some pics from the trip
105 with +10 Diopter
60mm only
60mm with +10 Diopter
105 only
105 only
105 only
105 with +10 Diopter
105 with +10 Diopter
105 with +10 Diopter
I was half thinking that I should have gone back to Lembeh instead.
Anyway by Sunday morning the sun was shining and I was heading down to Anilao.
The resort is still as good as it was last year, no noticeable major changes, food wholesome and plenty of it.
After lunch I started with a shore dive with Edgar, with whom I dived last year, nice to be back in the water after a six week dry spell, and it was warm too
From Monday I was diving with Norwell, and all dives with him were 80+ minutes, with the longest dive at 103 minutes in Secret Bay. By far my favourite site is Bethlehem over on Maricaban Island, half of my dives were at this site, and Norwell seemed to find mainly stuff less than 1cm in size, I had to mention to him that I like to photograph larger nudis too, so difficult to shoot with the 105mm lens and the +10 diopter and focus on these rhinophores, and it was certainly a pleasure to see a Risbecia tryoni or Chromodoris magnifica and photograph them too. I had my own boat and DM for the week, and plan to repeat this on my next trip back to CB, all that is required is a bit more sustenance for the SI.
There was a US couple from San Diego, Bob and Theresa, who arrived later on Sunday and they had already booked Edgar for the week. On Tuesday there was the Malaysian Invasion, with 20 people arriving and CB was running four boats daily to accommodate them, this also filled up the camera room too.
I have about 10+ new species of nudibranch (to me) to identify and will have my head in the books and on nudipixel over the next few days.
Some pics from the trip
105 with +10 Diopter
60mm only
60mm with +10 Diopter
105 only
105 only
105 only
105 with +10 Diopter
105 with +10 Diopter
105 with +10 Diopter
Last edited:
