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Sabang, Puerto Galera
Boracay
Moalboal
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Sabang, Puerto Galera
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South of the capital Manila, you'll find the island of Mindoro, with Puerto Galera on the northeast tip of the island. It's easy to get there; bus from Manila to Batangas and then a ferry to Mindoro. We chose to stay at Sabang Beach because of the number and quality of the diving operators there, but also because Sabang is a typical backpacker destination where you meet lot's of interesting people – and most of them is there to scuba dive.
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There are several excellent reefs for drift diving there –
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"The Abyss" and "The Fish Bowl" has an especially rich plant and animal life. It was also a surprisingly rich diversity of fish in the bay right outside Sabang. The water there was really clear, so we often spent the afternoons "fish spotting" at the local floating bar – anchored in the middle of the bay.
If you enjoy night diving, try to look up Sky at South Sea Divers. He's convinced that the normal time to go night diving, e.g. right after sunset, is a total waste. He claims that "…the day fishes hasn't gone to bed yet, and the night fishes definitely haven't gotten out of bed". We took him at his word, and persuaded him to arrange a real night dive… which he did, and we went in the water 02:45. We dove from the beach towards the wreck of a small fishing boat, and this dive can hardly be described – better go see for yourself! It is definitely my best night dive so far, and I recommend everybody to try this – either with Sky, or with one of the others at South Sea Divers, if you manage to talk them into it.
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Boracay
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Boracay is a small island located approx. in the middle of the Philippines. It is not much more than an oversized sand bank, which you can walk across on 15. min. As the description "sand bank" suggests, I'm not especially impressed with Boracay, and I'm not sure if I would recommend anybody to go there – unless you think it's find to spend lots of money, traveling halfway round the world, just to discover that you might as well could have chosen your nearest beach 'n party ' fun in the sun island.
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The diving isn't particularly great either – lots of sand and not much to see. We actually had one nice dive there, on a dive site called Yapak where you'll find lots of nice "oversized aquarium fishies"…
…but we obviously chose a good day to go there – the site was totally dead when we tried again the next day.
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Panangsama Beach, Moalboal
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Getting there can be a truly test of your patience if you chose to island-jump you way down by ferries, outriggers and jeepneys. If you do have the time for it, it's definitely a charming way of traveling the Philippines, at least as long as you don't expect anything to run on time, and don't mind spending an extra night or two on the way down. The easy way is to book a flight from Manila to Cebu, which isn't expensive.
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So, why go there? To plan a two weeks holiday only staying in Moalboal is probably overdoing it a
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bit, but if you're traveling in the Philippines it is definitely a place to stay for a couple of days – enjoy a nice 'n laid back life, and dive on Pescador Island.
Pescador is a small rock right outside Panangsama Beach. If your air consumption is normal and you don't go too deep, it's no problem to go around it in one dive. The dives we had there were excellent! In addition to a vast variety of colorful corals, Pescador is packed with fish – and we saw Whitetip's on all dives.
The ultimate experience for many divers going there, is a meeting with the Hammerheads. You need some luck to spot them, as they're neither especially social nor curious, and when the visibility is bad you'll have to dive beneath PADI's recommended limit for recreational divers to have a chance to see them. Unfortunately, we didn't see any Hammerheads on our dives. There weren't many dive operators to chose from there, but I can recommend to check out Visaya Divers.
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