And here is the promised detailed itinerary:
DAY 1:
- Dive 1 = Nat Nat island (morning). Easy shallow dive next to El Nido, to start things up. Coral reefs, lots of turtles, fishes, etc.
- Dive 2 = Brother island (late morning). Two hours by boat from El Nido. Nice reefs.
- Dive 3 = Linapacan (night dive). I'm really fond of night dives, I love to see the nocturnal life on the reefs. Unfortunately, there were quite some detritus around.
We stayed in a small hotel on Linapacan (very very basic). Dinner (as was the case for all other meals) was on the boat (the chef was amazing. I'm usually not quite fond of food in Philippines, I find it pales in comparison to other SE Asian countries, but no complains here).
DAY 2:
- Dive 1 = Running Sushi (morning dive). Reefs somewhere between Linapacan and Cullion. I think the name is quite expressive. Beautiful corals, and lots of fishes. Fishes everywhere.
- Dive 2 = Bugur Reef (early afternoon dive). Reefs around Cullion. I'm going to repeat myself, but all the dives around that day were really nice, and with lots of dives. Also, all dives that day were drift dives. Current could be quite swift at time, but usually the guides and captain would make sure that the pace would be nice and steady, avoiding too strong and dangerous currents.
- Dive 3 = Dynamite. Other groups went for an afternoon dive. Since my buddy and wanted to complete our Night course (as mentionned previously, mostly an excuse to do night dive), our guide gave us the choice: just relax and wait for the night, or get a short dive in while the others were getting a longer dive, in order to still enjoy the site and yet not load too much nitrogen. What a question! Of course we went for the dive. Only 30 minutes, but in my book, every dive, even a short one, is better than no dive. Again, nice reef.
- Dive 4 = Dynamite (again, but as a night dive). I consider it my second favorite night dive (after my first one ever in Hol Chan in Belize, which made me fall in love with this type of diving). There was just so much to see that we didn't know where to look anymore.
We actually arrived at the hotel in Cullion after Dive 3. Cullion in itself is an interesting island/town, with an old leprosery and worth the visit. We stayed there 2 nights.
DAY 3: That's when we started diving the wrecks!
- Dive 1: Akitsushima: I'll quote my dive log "Wow. Eery & fascinating. Could have spent hours exploring it". Rather deep dive though (30-35m) so one has to be careful. Also, the classic tour takes you through the ship. Be careful if you are not at ease with overhead environment. Especially since there's no line, etc... Used to be a seaplane tender. Can still see a lot of the machanism in it, the crane for the planes, etc.
- Dive 2: Okikawa Maru. Huge oil tanker, very impressive. Some penetration again.
- Dive 3: Okikawa Maru again. The boat is so big that we did two dives on it to cover it entirely. It's definitively an impressive boat. It has also become a nice reef, with lots of fishes and sponges and corals growing on it. It seems that is is breaking down though. We went there at the start of the season, and even I, as a rather novice diver, could notice the difference between the maps we were shown and the dive briefing and what we saw on the actual dive. The divemasters were also commenting on it after the dive. I hope it will hold on some more for future divers to see, and also because I haven't had enough of the wrecks during this trip and wish to dive there again.
The nice thing about staying in Cullion is that we were much closer to the wrecks than Coron, which meant that in the morning, we were the first one on them.
Current could be rather strong and visibility was not very good (approx. 5m). But they were fantastic and fascinating.
DAY 4: More wrecks!
- Dive 1: Kogyo Maru. Auxilliary cargo ship. Again, a very impressive wreck. Penetration through the cargo hold. Quite deep (30+ m).
- Dive 2: Morazan Maru (formely Olympia Maru). I'll shut up now in order to avoid too much repetition of superlative adjectives...
- Dive 3: Barracuda lake. Lake dive. Completely crazy dive. One has first to swim from boat to shore, than "hike" a few steps with full dive gear to get to the lake. Not too difficult though. There's a thermocline/halocline in the lake, which allows you plenty of fun. In the lower/salty/warmer part, it feels like diving in a hot spring, which is pretty cool. I loved the cliffs and landscape (but I seems that I'm really fond of wet rocks...). That dive gave a whole new meaning to "fun" dive. My avatar picture comes from that dive.
All in all, that was a fantastic trip. A few more words that I didn't manage to get in previously. We were 7 guests on the boat. The groups were kept to 2-3 divers per divemaster. So basically, a buddy pair + one divemaster, except for our group where we were 3. The crew was really friendly. Here's a video of our trip:
I hope I answered your questions!
