Sharks & tarsiers

MANGOOOO!!!

We stayed a few more days in Malapascua and were basically diving all the time. And having some beers in the evening, occasionally also some happy hour coctails. Tanja did the refresher dive and became a good buddy for almost all the rest of the dives. The dives at Gato Island were absolutely fantastic: beautiful corals, lots of small stuff and white tip reef sharks sleeping in caves!!! In the first one were 2 quite big ones and we found a baby shark in another small cave. Sleeping beauties!

Tanja looking mad. Or actually she looks like Meri.

Shitty pic, didn't wanna flash & wake them up...

Spanish dancer! Fantastic!!!

Sea horse playing dead :)

I also went to look for hammerheads 4 am in the morning in another sunken island (Kimud Shoal). The island was just a small sandy area and from there we disappeared to deep blue and waited, waited, waited. And there they were, 2 hammerheads cruising under us in maybe 50 meters. We dropped to 42 m and watched them hunting for quite a while. Amazing creatures!

And I just had to go back to see the thresher sharks at Monad Shoal once more. This time I decided to leave the camera behind and just to enjoy watching them. Shit. I'll never do that mistake again! I was the only one diving with air (others were on nitrox) so it was just me & Gibb, the dive master. We found ourselves a bit more remote place and waited for maybe a second before spotting the first ones. And this time they came soooo close! It felt like touching/hugging distance. 3 big ones were circling in front of us for a long time, sometimes coming directly towards me. What a video it would have made :( Nevertheless, I'll for sure never forget that dive. Breathtaking moments. No wonder a lot of divers are going back to Malapascua again and again. I will too.

We really liked Malapascua. White Sands was a good place to stay at. And big thanks to Junior, our chef in the village. We tried the food at the main beach a few times, thought it was tasteless and too expensive and started to eat only at Junior's place in the local village. Great lunch, fantastic BBQ in the evenings and nice chats with the chef and some other locals. I'm gonna dream of that chicken and sword fish. Eat and have some beers there if you go to Malapascua! It's also much more fun to watch the local kids dancing to bad disco music than other tourists in the beach bars.

My office at Malapascua. Stealing wireless from the neighbours.

But time to move on and stay out of water for a few days. We left early in the morning after the last shark dive and went to Bohol via Cebu. The plan was to visit the chocolate hills and to see some tarsiers. We stayed at Nuts Huts near Loboc. Hmmm... Maybe a small mistake. The place is quite nice, some huts near a river but it's a bit pain in the ass to get there and if you don't plan actually to stay there it's waste of effort and also money. It's not the cheapest place. You have to walk a muddy small road from the main road for about 1 km and then take a lot of steps to the river. We really liked Loboc so it's a shame we didn't stay directly in the town. It has a lovely small town/village vibe, good bbq & nice people. There's nothing really to do or see there, we just enjoyed sitting somewhere watching life go by.

Lovely Loboc

In the tarsier sanctuary we found 3 funny eyed creatures sleeping in the trees. It's a recommendable place to visit as they don't feed or capture the animals but provide them a secure place to live. They can also leave the whole area if they feel disturbed. Afterwards we took a bus to the chocolate hills and walked around a bit.

After 2 nights in Bohol it was time to move on, towards Apo Island. High expectations! More about that later. 

(Actually we already left Apo but I feel lazy and can't be bothered to write another update. Now it's beer o'clock anyways)