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)

One more thresher shark please

Back to Asia! About time to board Lufthansa's A380 again and fly to Singapore. After “boarding completed” announcement the running competition began towards the back of the plane where a few empty rows were waiting for the fastest ones. I probably was a sprinter in the last life and secured a 3 seat row just for myself. What a luxury on a 12 hour flight! One movie with dinner, 8 hours lying down and pretending to sleep, one movie with breakfast and it was already time to land. Why can't it always be like this?

Lufthansa had also messed up my food pre-order and as there was no regular veggie option they brought me the food from first class. Not business class but FIRST CLASS. Wow. I would have gladly paid for that set of asparagus. I'm not vegetarian but meat doesn't fly well.

Rain = beer o'clock!

I had a 8 hour stop over in Singapore and met Tanja in chinatown. After some hawker center food action we headed back to Changi and took another night flight to Cebu, Philippines. Landed at 4 am and towards bus station -> 4,5 hours in a local bus to Maya. We had a ridiculous double seat designed for mini people, the one sitting on the aisle was dropping to the floor all the time. We tried our best but no sleeping in the bus :(

The plan was to draw out money in Maya and to go to Malapascua for some immediate hammock action. New plan was to jump back to a bus and to drive 1 hour to the nearest city with an ATM. Then back to Maya with a jeepney which took 2 hours. Blaah. And it's low season so we had to wait almost an hour for other people to satisfy the boat driver and to make him to move the pangka to Malapascua island. That was a long day!

We had pre-booked accommodation, a lovely bungalow by the beach. It has 2 floors, one for each, luxury! And an own bathroom! With tiles! Sometimes it does make sense to travel together with somebody, if I would have been here just by myself this place would have been out of my budget. But 9 e each it's more than ok! The place is called White Sand, highly recommended! It's also located out of the party zone in a peaceful corner next to the local village but still very near to the main (tourist) beach where the dive shops are.

After arrival it was time to go dive shop shopping: comparing prices and checking the vibes. The dive shop has to have a nice vibe. The shop with the best vibe didn't wanna take me to Monad Shoal (THE thresher shark spot) on my first dive so we chose Thresher Shark Divers instead. Okay, I do understand that they want to check how people dive before they take them to some really difficult&deep dives, but this spot is only slightly advanced. Some small current, otherwise a really easy & enjoyable spot.

The sightings of thresher sharks on Monad Shoal are more than common, they are seen on 95 % of all dives. We were 5 divers divided into 2 groups. The other group saw one shark, we maybe 10. Lucky!!! And wow, they are amazing! I've never seen smiling sharks before! I hope the sharks also saw my smile!

Taking photos was almost impossible, the visibility was quite good but not good enough for no flash underwater photography especially as the sharks weren't posing for me. And we were in 30 m so not much daylight there. Sometimes it makes sense to forget the camera and to enjoy the moment.

The better one of the 2 photos I took...

There's many other fantastic dive spots around the island, f.ex. a sea snake sanctuary. That's gonna be the place to test how it feels to panic while diving. And at Gato Island is a cave where white tip sharks sleep!!! Yayyy! So that's the plan for the next days. Tanja is doing a refresher dive today so I hope she'll join me for the snake & shark action. She might have to hold my hand and put the regulator back to my mouth if I react the same way when I see a snake in the forest: scream & run.

Angry lion fish & some nudibranch.