pughio83
Contributor
Having been to the Philippines and Indonesia several times, I was looking for a new destination to provide something new and Romblon certainly delivered on this. In short, the macro and supermacro was amazing!
Getting to this island isn’t the easiest when compared to other islands, as flights schedules are limited and you can’t directly fly to Romblon island, only to neighbouring tablas where you get another boat from. However there are ferries overnight from batangas which go to tablas or to Romblon direct depending on the day of the week. My trip was made up of several international flights and then ferries within the country. It was made relatively easy as the Three P resort did most of the organising after my internal flight was cancelled. I gave them the passenger info and they booked all my ferries and had a driver collect me at each leg and take me to where I needed to go. I was basically collected from my Manila hotel, put onto a ferry, collected by another at the other end, etc etc until I arrived at the resort. You can do it yourself for cheaper but I didn’t fancy the stress.
The resort itself is relatively small. Maybe 10ish bungalows. Each bungalow is spacious, with large camera table, plenty plug sockets, air con and a pleasant bathroom. Lots of marble, locally made in romblon. They overlook mangroves with no beach per se. The restaurant is upstairs in the main building and there is a downstairs drinking/smoking area goood for socialising also.
The staff are super friendly, and efficient. Now the food was excellent given how remote the place is. The food is overseen by a German chef David who is a great cook and I have to say, the food served was excellent. Not one bad meal. The homemade chocolate ice cream was a dream. Breakfast was usually fresh baked bread, Asian options, fruits, sometimes cereals, omelette station and cheeses and tomatoes. Lunchtime was usually two courses and dinner was three courses. Ranging from pasta dishes, to burgers, curries and German- Filipino fusions. A real bonus to have a quality chef working for the resort.
The diving. Well, I went with a list. A list of mostly rare macro that I hadn’t seen. Some of which I had a good chance to see, some less likely but I did manage to see the majority. The guides were brilliant and I feel lucky because working there also was a Suisse lady called Fabia, who found a ton of rare shrimp for us! The boats were well designed and most dive sites were only 15-20mins away. Because most of the sought after stuff is present within around 10-12 dive sites, we didn’t venture to 30 different places like you might do elsewhere. Here they hone in on what people really want to see.
The reefs I would mostly describe as patch reefs. Sandy bottoms with patches of moderately healthy reef. Visibility was fine, temp was 28-29C. Minimal current and most dives well under 25m. The name of the game here is macro and super macro. Rare shrimp, rare nudibranchs. Mostly geared up for avid photographers. If you don’t have a decent camera set up for super macro then I don’t think this would be the best place to go. Because you won’t get large numbers of fish or anything big. And common macro that you see in other places just seems super small here!
Things I wanted to see and of which I did included cyerce species incl c.nigra, melibe colmani, simplex shrimp, leopard anemone shrimp and some of Xenia phyllodesmium nudibranches. However most of the really cool stuff I saw was stuff I had never even heard about, mostly as they are undescribed types and found in few books. I did manage to reserve some stuff to yet be seen so hopefully one day I can return.
It’s also a good place if you are into black water diving which was fun.
Romblon town has a small Italian restaurant which does great pizzas as an aside.
I think the costs are very reasonable for the quality of the diving, food and the friendliness and organisation of the staff.
I would recommend this place to anyone interested in underwater photography, super Marco, shrimps and nudibranchs, and black water diving.
Getting to this island isn’t the easiest when compared to other islands, as flights schedules are limited and you can’t directly fly to Romblon island, only to neighbouring tablas where you get another boat from. However there are ferries overnight from batangas which go to tablas or to Romblon direct depending on the day of the week. My trip was made up of several international flights and then ferries within the country. It was made relatively easy as the Three P resort did most of the organising after my internal flight was cancelled. I gave them the passenger info and they booked all my ferries and had a driver collect me at each leg and take me to where I needed to go. I was basically collected from my Manila hotel, put onto a ferry, collected by another at the other end, etc etc until I arrived at the resort. You can do it yourself for cheaper but I didn’t fancy the stress.
The resort itself is relatively small. Maybe 10ish bungalows. Each bungalow is spacious, with large camera table, plenty plug sockets, air con and a pleasant bathroom. Lots of marble, locally made in romblon. They overlook mangroves with no beach per se. The restaurant is upstairs in the main building and there is a downstairs drinking/smoking area goood for socialising also.
The staff are super friendly, and efficient. Now the food was excellent given how remote the place is. The food is overseen by a German chef David who is a great cook and I have to say, the food served was excellent. Not one bad meal. The homemade chocolate ice cream was a dream. Breakfast was usually fresh baked bread, Asian options, fruits, sometimes cereals, omelette station and cheeses and tomatoes. Lunchtime was usually two courses and dinner was three courses. Ranging from pasta dishes, to burgers, curries and German- Filipino fusions. A real bonus to have a quality chef working for the resort.
The diving. Well, I went with a list. A list of mostly rare macro that I hadn’t seen. Some of which I had a good chance to see, some less likely but I did manage to see the majority. The guides were brilliant and I feel lucky because working there also was a Suisse lady called Fabia, who found a ton of rare shrimp for us! The boats were well designed and most dive sites were only 15-20mins away. Because most of the sought after stuff is present within around 10-12 dive sites, we didn’t venture to 30 different places like you might do elsewhere. Here they hone in on what people really want to see.
The reefs I would mostly describe as patch reefs. Sandy bottoms with patches of moderately healthy reef. Visibility was fine, temp was 28-29C. Minimal current and most dives well under 25m. The name of the game here is macro and super macro. Rare shrimp, rare nudibranchs. Mostly geared up for avid photographers. If you don’t have a decent camera set up for super macro then I don’t think this would be the best place to go. Because you won’t get large numbers of fish or anything big. And common macro that you see in other places just seems super small here!
Things I wanted to see and of which I did included cyerce species incl c.nigra, melibe colmani, simplex shrimp, leopard anemone shrimp and some of Xenia phyllodesmium nudibranches. However most of the really cool stuff I saw was stuff I had never even heard about, mostly as they are undescribed types and found in few books. I did manage to reserve some stuff to yet be seen so hopefully one day I can return.
It’s also a good place if you are into black water diving which was fun.
Romblon town has a small Italian restaurant which does great pizzas as an aside.
I think the costs are very reasonable for the quality of the diving, food and the friendliness and organisation of the staff.
I would recommend this place to anyone interested in underwater photography, super Marco, shrimps and nudibranchs, and black water diving.
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