Last time I was in the Philippines, for whatever reason, I did not go diving with the thresher sharks at an island called Malapascua, I don’t know why, and now I needed to correct that mistake. First stop was flying to the big island of Cebu, the capital Cebu City, which is the 2nd biggest city in the Philippines. There’s not much to do in the city, but plenty to do around the island!
When I’m in the Philippines there’s a FB group called Travel Philippines, and there’s lots of useful information and updates posted on it. A lot of time people post their interests and itineraries in case other people want to meet up. One guy posted that he was doing something very similar to my itinerary and that he wanted to do a bunch of diving, so I posted something saying we should meet up. We ended up taking the same bus up to Malapascua together. He’s 29 from Montreal, traveling Southeast Asia for a few months, and works as an arborist for the majority of the year, just not the winters. Sitting next to us on the bus was a Russian girl who was also really friendly, she’s a travel blogger and organizer for Russian clients, and basically travels almost full time. So already we had a nice group of three.
After we took the 40 minute boat over to the island me and Alex found a place with bungalow type accommodation and a dive shop (and a pool too!) while Alena wanted a bit more higher end accommodation. But we all met up at sunset and had dinner together. They have a local seafood market with 4 or 5 different places that have all their fish on display and you just pick out whatever you want them to throw on the grill. And after El Nido and Coron tourist prices, this place felt like a steal.
The next day we took easy and went to the beach and all three of us did one afternoon dive, a nice quick one, 15 minutes away by boat. Nothing amazing, but it was good for Alena who hadn’t done any dives in a few years. The next morning was the thresher shark dive which you have to get up at 4:30am for! The threshers are these sharks with long, whippy tails and are very distinctive looking!
So we all met up 4:45 at the shop, and by 5am we were on the boat, and it was another hour to get out to the dive site. It’s a popular place. It’s what the island is famous for! So we geared up, jumped in, and went off to find some sharks. Although they find you! The way it works is you pick a spot along the shoal where they normally hang out, and just wait for them to swim by. It took a little while at first, and I was starting to get frustrated because we seemed to be staking out a spot kind of far away from other divers, but eventually someone pointed directly behind me, and there was our first one! The first thing you notice when their swimming towards you is how big their eyes are! They’re almost unproportionally big, unblinking eyes, that kind of look like an anime cartoon eye. And then once it swims past is when you see just how big that big long tail really is. It’s like the whole length of the shark’s body! We ended up seeing 5 or 6 on that first dive. Which seemed like a lot. On the second dive we saw even more!
First impression
The second dive we saw them right away as soon as we jumped in. And this location seemed to have a bit better visibility, so we could get an even better view. We found a good spot to park ourselves and saw at least a dozen sharks on this dive, although I don’t know how many were the same shark swimming past over and over again. But it was a very cool experience! The only downside were the tiny jellyfish in the water that were stinging my face and hands. It was painful enough that this would be a one-time diving experience!
Look at those big weird eyes
Alena checking out this one
The next day was a divesite called Gato, which was also a really good one, we saw a shark and blue ringed octopus, which I was really excited about because they’re hard to find! Then it was party night in Malapascua, Saturday night, the once per week tradition. One of the bigger bars had a DJ, dancing, a multi-lingual host – because there’s lots of Koreans, and it was a good time. Of course I was done by midninght, Alex was out till 4am or whatever. The next day was a rest day, beach day, and that concluded our stay on Malapascua. Early the following morning we were off to see the sardines at Moalboal, unfortunately a good 9-10 hours by boat-bus-taxi-bus. Travel days in the Philippines are no joke!
The very poisonous blue-ringged octopus
colorful sea worm
reef shark swimming around near the tunnel
the very unusual looking Frogfish
I felt kind of bad for Moalboal. Its still a popular destination, but it used to have a nice beach that got swept away by typhoons. Then they built a beautiful pier into the ocean and that got knocked out in the last few years too! But what it’s famous for is this massive school of sardines that hang out not far from the coast, is still there fortunately! Plus there’s a nice shelf that has lots of fish and plenty of turtles as well. The first morning Alex and I got our snorkeling gear and went out to see the sardines. You just swim to where there is a group of people out in the ocean and eventually you find it, hundreds of thousands, millions?? of these small fish all swimming together. It’s quite the sight. It’s like a living, moving organism. You can dive down into the school and they part all around you. It’s a lot fun if you can free dive a bit.
Moaloal fisherman
You can see the beach is mostly just rocks now, broken pier in the background
Of course this very same morning is when I broke the underwater casing for my phone, so I couldn’t take any photos. It was in the front compartment of my scooter and I hit a bump and it popped out and hit the ground. I figured it would be fine, but nope, it was leaking this gel material into the casing which I’m guess is for the deep water insulation. So that was a pretty big bummer. I really liked my phone casing. And the shot of diving into the school of sardines is probably one of the most unique, instagrammable shots in all of the Philippines. Sigh.
Around Moalboal also has a lot of waterfalls, so me Alex and Alena all rented scooters and decided to spend the day cruising around to check them out. The roads up into the hills aren’t great, nor clearly marked, but it makes for a bit more adventure. We went to three different waterfalls, each one different in their own way. One was tall, but not good for swimming, one was where all the local kids hang out, and one was perfect for doing jumps. These type of days, just driving around finding cool spots with scooters are always some of my favorite days when I’m traveling! And since we were parting ways with Alena that evening, we had a nice Italian meal (her favorite) courtesy of our guesthouse owner, who is Italian and cooks dishes made to order, as long as you order your dinner before noon the day of! Although the wine was not great and the risotto was undercooked, but hey it’s the Philippines!
