Malapascua Day 9 & 10
We got to sleep in a little today. We were up around 7 o’clock. After getting the cameras and our stuff
ready, we headed to breakfast. We mixed
it up a little today and I had a bowl of fresh fruit (including mango of
course) and some homemade bread toasted, while Eric had garlic rice.
Today we were doing a day trip to Kalanggaman island. It takes about an hour and a half to get
there by boat. After our sleep-inducing
ride to the island we jumped in for our first dive along the wall. It is very pretty with lots of large fan and
soft corals. One of the guides pointed
out a pigmy seahorse to me and after staring at the fan coral for quite some
time, I was finally able to see it move.
They blend in so well, and are so tiny, that it is extremely hard to see
them. There was nothing overly
spectacular, it was just a very nice place to dive and the visibility was good
as well.
After our first dive we headed to the island for lunch. For lunch we had BBQ with rice, vegetables,
and vegetarian noodles. After we
devoured our yummy lunch, we walked down the beach to the sand bar. The island has a large sand bar that
stretches out into the water that is almost as big as the island itself. It is a very pretty island that is a popular
place for the locals and tourists to take day trips.
After we had all relaxed and explored the island a bit, we
hopped back on the boat and headed out to do the second dive, which was along
the wall, but in a different direction.
Toward the end of the dive we ended up on top of the reef with lots of
little things to see such as the gobies with their “housekeeping” shrimp.
We were on this trip with a group of 8 divers from Singapore
who were all photographers. As we were
coming up to begin our three-minute safety stop, we noticed there was still one
guy laying down on the bottom, taking pictures.
The guide started banging on his tank and I started shaking my
noisemaker trying to get his attention.
We finally got his attention. By
that time he had already gone into decompression time of 17 minutes, which
meant he had to stay under water for his safety stop for that length of time
(instead of just 3 minutes). We all sat
on the boat and waited for him and the guide to surface and get on the
boat. By the time the diver was able to
surface, he barely had any air left—he got really lucky. That is why it is so important to always keep
an eye on your air and no decompression time—no matter what you are doing.
After everyone was back on the boat safety, we started our
hour and a half cruise back to Malapascua.
By the time we got back to the resort, it was about 5:30 p.m. We got cleaned up and came back to the
restaurant to have some dinner before heading to bed for another early
morning.
Today is our last day of diving. We signed up to do the early morning Kimud
Shoal/Monad Shoal 2-tank dive at 4:45 a.m.
Kimud Shoal is an underwater island where they have seen hammerheads in
the past, so we thought we would give it a shot. After our Layang Layang schooling hammerhead
trip a few years ago was a bust, we have yet to see a hammerhead. After the almost hour trip to get out there,
we jumped in and swam around for about an hour.
There were lots of assorted jellies, but no hammerheads.
After everyone was back on the boat, we headed back to Monad
Shoal to see if we could spot some Threshers.
After an hour surface interval on the boat, we dove in again. I don’t think anyone saw any Threshers, but
it was still a nice dive. I did manage
to see an anemone all balled up—which I have only seen a couple times. It is really neat to see as some of them can
be very colorful—this one was blue/purple.
We did these two dives with the Singaporian group as well
and everyone did a little better with watching their air/time. We only had to collect up one diver that did
not stay with the group on the second dive.
After everyone was on the boat, we made our way back to the resort. We got back around 9:30 and I ordered
breakfast for both of us before breakfast time ended at 10 a.m.
We enjoyed our breakfast and the wonderful breeze coming off
the water before heading to our room to have a little nap before our afternoon
dive at 2:30. After our nap, we returned
to the restaurant to have a snack before our dive on the house reef. We had not yet had an opportunity to dive the
house reef, which is really nice, so we were anxious to go today as it would be
our last opportunity.
Gino was our guide for the dive and it was just Eric and
me. There is always some current on the
house reef, but it wasn’t horrible today.
This was an awesome dive—the best of the trip and a wonderful last
dive. We saw all kinds of stuff—a
stargazer (which I had never seen before), octopus, decorator crabs, porcelain
crab, snapping shrimp, squat lobster, emperor shrimp, zebra urchin crab, box
crab, urchin carry crab, clownfish with eggs, cuttlefish, nudibranchs and other
usual suspects.
After a great last dive, we rinsed all our gear and started
the drying process in preparation for packing everything up. We then returned to our room, got cleaned up,
checked out the photos and video from today, and then headed to the restaurant
to have dinner. We won’t be diving
tomorrow so we can stay up as late as we want and sleep in tomorrow. We will be leaving tomorrow afternoon around
5 p.m. to get the last boat crossing before dark. Our flight leaves Cebu just after midnight,
but we don’t like cutting it too close getting to the airport since it involves
a boat crossing and then a 3-4 hour drive to get there. You never know what traffic or the roads are
going to be like getting to the airport.
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