Malapascua Day 7 & 8
Day 7
Today was another busy diving day. We got up around 4:15 a.m. for the 5:15
Thresher shark dive. It was a nice dive
today as it was just the two of us with our guide, Jo. The rest of the divers were with other
guides. We saw quite a few Thresher
sharks, and the current was much better today—much easier to stay in one
place—but the visibility was still an issue.
I didn’t get any decent video but Eric got one or two photos that
weren’t too bad.
After the dive, we collected everyone up, including one of the
owner’s, Matt, and his student who were diving on rebreathers. We had stopped the boat and were waiting for
them and the next thing we knew someone was knocking on the hull of the boat. As the rebreathers make no bubbles, there was
no way for the boatmen to tell where they were.
After we got back to Evolution, we had our usual French
Toast breakfast with fresh sliced mangos and relaxed for a short bit before our
next dive at 9:30 to Lapus Lapus.
This was our first dive to Lapus Lapus on this trip. We jumped in and there was a fair amount of
current. We managed to see a couple
seahorses before we had to head up more shallow as we were running low in our
no decompression limits. We actually
stayed down a little longer and our guide, Jo, headed up as he only had 1
minute left of no decompression time. So
Eric and I cruised around for a while longer before we surfaced. Eric got some practice deploying his SMB
(surface marker buoy—AKA safety sausage) under water.
After the boat collected us up and everyone was accounted
for, we headed back to the resort. On
the way back we got to see the boat parade circling the island. Today and tomorrow they are having a big
fiesta here on the island and the boat parade was part of the festivities.
We rinsed off a bit and then headed to lunch. We sat and talked with a diver that just
arrived from France yesterday, Francois.
We had a nice chat, ate our lunch, and then relaxed for a while before
our 1:30 dive to Deep Slope.
We had already been to Deep Slope twice before, but because
of the tides today there was too much current to dive just about any place
else. The seahorse was still in the sea
fan here and we saw an orangutan crab, nudibranchs, and all the other usual
suspects. In the beginning of the dive
there wasn’t much current, but by the end it was starting to get pretty strong,
so we headed up.
We got back to the resort around 3:30 or so and got cleaned
up and looked at the pictures and video we had captured today. Afterward, we headed to the restaurant to get
some dinner and chat with people. We
might also wander into the village and check out the fiesta as well.
Day 8
Today I decided to sleep in and Eric got up at 4 am to go do
the shark dive. I ended up getting up
around 6:30 and the boat got back from the dive around 7:30. Eric said the sharks came in close and he got
some really good video—he decided to take my video camera instead of his
camera. I had ordered breakfast as soon
as I saw the boat returning, so after Eric rinsed his gear off, we had
breakfast sitting in the loungers by the beach and looked at the video he
shot. He did get some really good
video—I told him of course he would see something good, because I did not go…
Our next dive was at 9:30 to Bogtang Bato, which seems to be
the staff’s favorite dive site. It is a
rock pinnacle that is covered in soft coral.
It is possible to swim circles around it, but the current is pretty
strong a lot of the time on some sides.
We saw at least three or four different color and size frog fish, and
the highlight was a mantis shrimp just standing out in the open (which we have
never seen before—usually they are hiding in a hole or under a rock and won’t
come out for anything). He/she was very
cooperative and I got some video and Eric got a really good picture. We managed to swim around the entire pinnacle
in the current and were the next to the last people to surface.
We headed back to the resort and had lunch before our 1:30
dive to Devil Ray Corner (at Monad Shoal).
There was some pretty good surface current here, as there usually is,
and we followed the mooring line down to the bottom. We cruised around at around 100+ feet for a
while and actually saw a couple whitetip sharks and a Thresher. After that we cruised along the wall and
found a huge puffer fish and some other interesting stuff to look at. The staff here trusts us enough that they
usually let us finish up the dives on our own as most people run low on air way
before us, so we look around for a while longer and then do our safety stop
before surfacing. Eric and I managed to
find a mooring line to go up to do our safety stop, but we probably should have
just floated away with the current as there were a lot of jellies floating by
us. Eric got a sting on his chin and I
got some on my hands (about the only parts of our bodies exposed). It just turns red and stings a bit for a
while. We put some white vinegar on it
to help calm it down when we got back on the boat.
After returning back to the resort, we got all our gear
rinsed out and got cleaned up. We looked
at the video and pictures that we had taken today and then walked over to the
restaurant for some dinner. We ended up
sitting and chatting with one of the other divers who has been diving with us,
Aidan—from Ireland. After dinner and
some good conversation, we all decided to walk to the main part of the island
and check it out. It was a good night to
do so as it was really windy, which makes it not so steamy once you get away
from the beach.
We wandered around the barrio for a while and then made our
way back to Evolution. By this time it
was around 8:30 and we headed to our room so I could type up the blog and we
headed off to bed after a hard day of diving…
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