Our long journey from Coron to Malapascua got worse after the two flights and 10 hour wait in the cramped ill equipped Manila domestic terminal. After an overnight stay in Cebu we boarded a bus bound for the closest port to Malapacua island to be told that we were lucky, we had a “very good driver, very fast”. Not two things that necessarily go together in my mind. The guy had a heavy right foot, full throttle or full braking was all he knew. Add to that the constant swerving in and out of traffic to overtake regardless of oncoming traffic. This was nothing compared to passing schools at above 70 mph on the wrong side of the road (the centre here was divided with big signs with “school slow” plastered all over them) air horn blasting with children running for their lives away from the road. After three hours of reckless and downright dangerous driving we’d had enough and got off early fearing for our lives. This was worse than that Indian journey.

A further two hours in a subsequent bus we saw ourselves fending off the usual tourist trap tricks thrown at us by all the boat crews to extort money from us (been on the road for six months now, not falling for that one mate). After some tough negotiating we saw ourselves on a pleasant Bangka ride across to Malapascua (interesting story behind the name, but I leave that for Espe to explain.

Malapascua is another one of The Philippines beautiful desert Islands. Long white sand beaches, palm trees, coral reefs off the beach etc. Unfortunately we were greeted by a whole load of building rubble. The local government has introduced a new law banning all buildings within 20 metres of the high tide line on all the beaches. Apart from the temporary chaos I think this is a good thing as it will get rid of some ugly concrete monstrosities close to the water and prevent this island becoming like Sabang Beach. There are some exceptions though. There is a Danish run resort on one of the smaller beaches that has some nice wooden huts tidily tucked behind the treeline, but as the beach is smaller these fall into the 20 metre cut off and have to go. With no space to rebuild the huts further back this resort has to close. A real injustice as the rule has been created to generate more resorts like this one.

So why did we come to Malapascua? Diving of course. With almost guaranteed sightings of thresher sharks, who were we to resists? Such promise comes at a price though. This came in the form of a 4:30 am start. We spent 50 minutes searching around an open water shoal in the cold and relative darkness fighting a reasonable current. We were rewarded with little more than a fleeting glimpse of a graceful thresher shark, long tail and all, before it was scared off by some divers hovering at higher depths (the key at this site is stay down on the shoal so as not to spook the sharks). Big fish sighting as I well know are all about luck.

Later in the day we returned to the same dive site. The 20 metre deep shoal has has very deep water all around and very little of interest on the shoal bed. It is however what is known as a cleaning station where small cleaing wrasse fish clean whatever big things come along, be it sharks or divers (thats right, I had a cleaning wrasse nibbling at my wet suit).

For this dive we dropped down rested on the shole floor. No finning about in the current, just waiting. This was a really different experience for me from the dives I’ve done up to this point. With the visability not more than 6 metres and along with being really rather cold I became fully aware that I was absolutely clueless as to what was out there in the big dark blue open sea, then suddenly it appeared, a huge beast swimming slowly gracefully towards us. No not the elusive thresher but a large manta ray. Another incredible animal. So beautiful “flying” along infront of us with it’s huge wings. Fifteen seconds later it was out of view but those short 15 seconds made the whole two plus hour trip worthwhile. True grin factor. Without my camera I had more time to focus on the ray while it passed by leaving the faffing for someone else, in this case Richard…

… which brings me onto another highlight of our time on Malapascua. As far back as Tioman in Malaysia the places where we have been diving the other divers have not made particularly good company. This was an exception. First I got talking to a chap who shared my name and several of my interests and then later on Richard (who really reminded me of my uni course mate Graeme) who as an experienced diver and experienced traveller had loads to talk about and was full of tips. Best of all, for you guys at least, is that Richard was kind enough to give me his pictures to use here.

Our second day of diving was even better. We went out to Gata Island, a tiny limestone outcrop with an underwater cave running through the middle of it. With only four divers on board, not another boat in sight and accompanied only by a host of bird life, from the surface alone this promised to be a great dive. The coral around the island was incredible and although lacking in large schools
of fish there was plenty to see… scorpion fish, frog fish, lion fish, hermit crabs, anemone fish, shrimps, juvenile harlequin sweetlips (the patterns and fins are as elaborate as its name) sea horses and many of the usual reef fish. Best part for me was peering into a cave only to come face to face with three sharks less than a metre away. Later on we saw two more out in the open swimming about. Incredible.

Coming up to shallower depths we were accompanied throughout our safety stop by a banded sea snake. Not only my longest dive to date, but probably my best. I cannot remember ever being so comfortable under the water.

All three dives that day were excellent including the twilight dive watching very pretty mandarin fish plus the usual night dive stuff; crabs, shrimp, octopi, cuttle fish etc. With all three dives over an hour long we were understandably exhausted at the end of the day.