Philippines Part 1 – Malapascua Island and Thresher Sharks (August 18-23)

As I started to do my research for the Philippines, I started with one of the dive centers that I wanted to dive with (Thresher Shark Divers).  The reviews were outstanding and I was very impressed after my week.  The owner of the dive shop was very helpful to get me to the island, but also with some general tips for the Philippines and planning the rest of my time in the country.  So I’m so glad I picked his brain as this helped me a ton.

The biggest item he warned me of was getting to any island in Philippines would be harder and more time consuming than any other country in SE Asia.  I was a little surprised to hear this, but the owner warned me it could take 12 hours with all the planes, cars, ferries to connect.  So with this information, I decided to visit fewer islands and spend more time on each island.

Journey from Shanghai to Malapascua Island

So the first island I was going to visit was Malapascua Island and it literally took me 12 hours to get there from Shanghai, China.  I left China at 12:30am, landed at Manila at 4:00am, connected on another flight to Cebu Island at 7:00.  Once I had my luggage, I met a driver and was off for a 3 hour private car transfer to the northern tip of Cebu Island.  The dive center met me for the final 30 minute ferry ride to finally reach Malapascua Island.  I arrived right around 12:00 noon, and I was wrecked and exhausted from the journey through the night and early morning.  When I sat down for a minute, I looked around and the island and the water was beautiful.  I knew it was going to be so worth the journey! These photos were the first views I had as I sat at the dive center.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This island is so small, there are no cars, no paved roads and the “main drag” was a sand path around the island.  As I looked at my big bag (on wheels), I was sorta dreading the final journey to my hotel.  Luckily, the dive center that picked me up, had one of the guys carry my bag to the hotel (as they are quite used to this).  I was more than happy to tip him as my bag weighed 27 kilos (60 lbs)!

I checked into my hotel and had a lovely ocean front bungalow. Even though I had some issues with my room (and ended up changing rooms), it was a nice location with a private beach to swim in and it was home for the next 5 days. I added some notes below in logistics about hotels for future trips as I would stay elsewhere if possible.

 

Lots of Scuba Diving

The whole reason I came to Malapascua Island was the hope to see a Thresher Shark. I had googled the best dive sites in the Philippines and this island one kept coming up as the best for the high probability of seeing the rare Thresher Sharks. So I figured I had to time to get there, as it was a trek to reach the island, but in the end….it was totally worth the journey!  Here is one of the dive boats I ended up spending much of my five days on.

 

Thresher Sharks!!!

Thresher sharks are active predators and the long tail is actually used as a weapon to stun prey. They can grow to be 7 meters (20 feet) in length, and the tail can be as long as the body! When hunting schooling fish, Thresher Sharks are known to “slap” the water, herding and stunning prey. The elongated tail is used to swat smaller fish, stunning them before feeding.  Here are a couple photos I took, plus one more from the internet which is a little clearer to see the awesome tail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I learned that the Thresher Sharks like to swim deep in the ocean, but they tend to come to cleaning stations around 30 meters (100 feet) very early in the morning before the sun comes up. So this is really the only way to see them as this is about as deep as you can scuba dive. This would mean I had to be at the dive center by 4:45am to ensure we were in the water by 5:30am before the sun came up. As soon as the sun came up, the sunlight would shine too much in the water and the sharks would dive deeper for the rest of the day.

I took Tuesday off to relax on the beach and figured I would start my shark diving on Wednesday morning. So I woke up at 4:15am, grabbed my flash light (to walk to the dive center in the dark) and was off to the shark site.   I was very excited as I had never seen this type of Thresher Shark and was hoping to see just one. I was thrilled as we saw 7 Thresher Sharks that morning and 3 that were circling at the same time. It was really unreal!

After this first shark dive, I decided I wanted to go back the next morning and then once again on Friday morning before I left the island. Why not…the whole reason I came to Malapascua Island was to see these Thresher Sharks, so I was going to take it all in! I was not disappointed as we saw 5 sharks on the second day and about 6 on the last day. One day, the shark got really close to me while I was videoing and another day it came really close to me and then swam right by my dive master and you can see his excitement in the video at the end. I tried to label the videos and best places to see the sharks as I wasn’t able to edit these videos and cut out the early or late footage, but they are all fairly short.

 

Thrasher Shark Videos – Click on Video # below to play the You Tube Video or copy and paste this link into browser:

Video #1 – Fast forward video to start at 0:55.  Best views at these times: 1:00, 1:10, 1:40, 2:00, 2:25 and 2:50 (Total – 2:56 minutes) – http://youtu.be/s5NdfzjsD0Y

Video #2 – Fast forward video to start at 0:20.  Shark comes up close to me around 0:25 and my dive master at end.  I was just to the right of my dive master that was excited for the up close shark encounter (Total – 0:43 minutes) – http://youtu.be/hGOK9U-g56k

Video #3 – Three sharks at once, but they are a little further away in this video. Best views at: 0:09, 0:25, 0:57, 1:10, 1:38 (Total – 2:00 minutes) – http://youtu.be/DkqqKc1RYPE

Video #4 – Quick Shark Circle (Total – 0:10 minutes) – http://youtu.be/-TW5_31r9tk

 

Additional Scuba Dives Stories From Week:

Since the Thresher Sharks were only the first early morning dive each day, I had a lot more time on the island. So I decided to get my scuba diving fill in. I ended up doing 10 dives in 4 days. That included two days where I did four dives and basically lived at the dive center and on the boat. So here are a few highlights:

Giant Octopus  – While we were sitting on the ocean floor hoping that Giant Manta Rays may come this this cleaning station, my dive buddy and I looked to our left and saw something sticking out of this rock.  As I moved closer, I saw it was a giant octopus….like from the movie Popeye (with Robin Williams).  I was so excited as I have only seen one small octopus at night and this was a giant one all tucked into (and trying to hid)  in this rock.  So I started to take some photos of him and noticed he changed color from a dark purple, to lighter white color.  The upper right photos show the color change, then the bottom right corner shows the tucked in tentacles.  This is my dive buddy in the photo (not me) and a closer up photo of the octopus’s head in the lower left part of the photo.   You can see the left eye and nose of the octopus in this photo with my dive buddy.  Crazy as the octopus really blends into the rock well.

It was crazy as no one else on our dive realized we saw this octopus as they were all watching and waiting for the Manta Ray and we were the last people on the far left of the dive site and the water was a little murky.  So we had almost 30 minutes to chill and watch this octopus change colors and move up, down and around a bit.  It was super cool!

 

Mandarinfish – These fish are some of the most colorful fish in the world and also hardest to find when diving.  I was told the dive center recently had some luck finding them in some of the coral beds near Malapascua Island…so I was interested in this night dive.  We literally hovered over the coral for about 30 minutes in hope of seeing them and we were lucky to find some.  Once we found some, we saw over 100 of them and some of them that were pairing and mating which was really awesome to watch.  They were really colorful, and actually quite hard to photograph as they swim very fast and move among the coral quickly.  So these were the best photos of the 30 minutes we hovered and before it got too dark.  I loved them so much, I had to go back another night to see them again.

 

Night Dives – I did two night dives…mostly to see the mandarinfish but also as I heard there were sea horses at times.  I had never seen a sea horse, so I was in.  The mardarinfish were amazing and on both night dives we saw large sea horses.  First dive we saw two seahorses and next night dive we saw three.  The seahorses did not photograph well at all, but they were very cool to see.  The large seahorses were about 7-8 inches tall.

On my last night dive, we also saw some tiny Pygmy seahorses.  The Pygmy seahorses are some of the smallest seahorse species in the world, typically measuring less than 2 centimeters…but my dive masters found them and were able to point them out which was cool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jellyfish – We were warned there were a lot of jellyfish in the water and encouraged to wear full wet suits and booties for protection, even through the water was warm.  I took this advice and avoided any jellyfish stings.  Many locals and “too cool divers” went without the wetsuits and some of them got stings.  Each person that got stung complained that the stings hurt and each person had instant swollen and red skin.  I don’t know why people would avoid a wet suit knowing the high chance of a sting…as the stings and aftermath were just painful.   As we were diving and doing safety stops, I was able to get these two different photos of the horrible jellyfish, and I was very glad I avoided them.

 

Gato Island – Swimming Under the Whole Island -This was a cool dive as we got to swim UNDER the whole island and it was a large island. The highlights of this dive site is it’s considered a “cavern” dive and there are often white-tip sharks.  We saw two, but no photos of them.  We were able to swim about 25 metres under this island and there was a short section in the middle of the tunnel where it is not possible to see external light and we had to have an underwater flashlight to see on this dive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Additional Photos From Other Dives 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Island Living

I loved walked around the island and seeing how the locals live on the interior parts of the island.  I kept walking past this little girl in this broken down crib.  One morning I looked at her and said she was so cute (out loud) and this little voice from inside the house responded, “yes…she is super cute and she’s my little sister!”.  Then a little boy came out to smile as it was his voice.  I asked if I could take a picture of his sister and he said yes and right then, the little girls sister came into the photo and was making the peace sign…I guess they start to train them to make this sign early.

 

I also came across some of the local women fighting as it turned into quite a scene.  One of the local women came up to me to apologize that I saw this island fight, and I laughed and said people fight in my country as well.  She explained that two women were fighting over some chickens.  One woman was storing live chickens where she shouldn’t and the other woman didn’t like it as it was upsetting her family.  The one that was upset was banging on the house of the other (and as you can see…these homes are not that sturdy).  I was worried the woman may break the home.  It was some of the loudest yelling and fighting I’ve heard by two woman and it was like a train wreck…I couldn’t leave and neither could these other local women.  It was the most excitement in a long time.

The house on the left is where the “illegal chickens” were being stored – well in a little closet area on the back side that I couldn’t get a photo of during the fight.  Other chickens are all free range as you see them wandering around in the middle and right photos.  All the homes were very simple and open air laundry was the normal as it was so hot.

 

The One Raining and Storm Day

Right when we got out of the water from our Thresher Shark dive (at 7:00am), it started to rain, then it was pouring.  We were hoping it would stop, but it rained pretty hard for almost 7 hours and really flooded the island.  It was crazy to see all the rain and hear all the locals talk about the Typhoon Yolanda that hit in 2013 as they were all reliving that disaster (and still rebuilding the island). I decided it was a good day to stay in, do research for upcoming destinations and work on my blog.  By 2:00pm…it was sunny and clear.

Beautiful Starfish of the Philippines

I love starfish and tend to take photos when I see new ones. I didn’t expect to see 22 different types of starfish and started to take photos of them for a special starfish photo collage.

Most of these were taken in Malapascua Island, but 1 was taken on a snorkel trip in Bohol, and 5 were taken on a dive trip in Boracay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Planning for Teresa to Join Me

I was very excited when I got an email from my friend Teresa. She asked where I was going to be in the coming days as she wanted to come join me for a little vacation. Teresa and I have traveled to a few countries over the past five years…so why not have her join me in the Philippines too?

So I did what any normal traveler does in between scuba dives…I researched flight options for her to make it easy and ensure she had no way to say no to coming to the Philippines. So while Teresa was sleeping (with the 15 hour time zone difference), I found a few really good flight options and when she woke up and saw a plan all worked out, she said she was in and bought the ticket. So I knew I had about three days left on my own and then two weeks with Teresa. She had a lot to do in order to leave San Diego in three days, so I was in charge of planning the next destinations and figuring out how we would get there…but that was worth it to have Teresa come out for some fun in the sun!

On Saturday, August 23^rd  at 6am, I started my 4 hour journey back from Malapascua Island to meet Teresa at the Cebu airport and start a new journey to Bohol Island.  Here was my last sunrise from the boat ride from Malapascua as I said goodbye…

So that’s it for Thresher Sharks and Malapascua Island. I would highly recommend coming here to dive and relax and hope to make it back one day.

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Logistics:

Hotels:

1. Ocean Vida Beach & Dive Resort (http://ocean-vida.com) – I wanted to stay here, but it was fully booked for the nights I needed. It was a nicer resort and right in the middle of the main drag of bounty beach.   Rooms were a little more expensive than Tepanee and it was the #1 rated hotel for the island. If I return, I would try to stay here.
2. Tepanee Beach Resort (http://www.tepanee.com/index_eng.htm) – This is the resort where I stayed.  It was rated the #2 hotel on the island. The resort was nice with a private beach, but you have to reserve the right room (meaning get one with A/C and not one of the ocean front bungalows). Those rooms are the worst with no A/C and I ended up moving rooms 3 times (and I never do that!) The hotel is a 5 minute walk from the main strip of the bounty beach, so quieter and more private but it’s still easy to get everywhere else on the island as it’s a small island.

 

Dive Center

Thresher Shark Divers  (www.malapascua-diving.com) – Wonderful dive center that I would go back to in future. Safety first, new equipment to rent and great dive masters. Also able to see Thresher Sharks every morning as they know where the cleaning stations are.