Paradise beaches

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This post came a bit late and it’s about Malapascua. Malapascua was my favorite destination in the Philippines. But just to give continuance to my last post, I’ll write about the previous days (I left off in Makassar, Sulawesi Island, Indonesia and from there flew to Manila and then went to Malapascua), so I’ll go off topic in the first paragraphs.



From Toraja (Sulawesi Island, Indonesia) I had the same 10 hour bus ride back to Makassar. Even though the bus was pretty decent, the guy next to me wasn’t. After 10 hours of him elbowing me, talking loudly on the phone, etc., just before arriving to the bus station, apparently he couldn’t control his bladder any longer and he asked me “permission” to pee in a plastic bottle while sitting on the seat next to mine. Of course I refused, so he had no choice but to get off the bus. Some nerve.

The bus left me at the station and I had to figure out which bemo to take back to the “Legend hostel”, where I had stayed previously. I asked a man in a shop and he managed to explain which bemo to take and where I should get off. The bemo took me close enough to where I needed to get to (I was familiar with the area) and I walked the rest of the way. I was very tired, so I went to get something to eat and then straight to sleep.



The next morning I woke up late and had to kill time before going to the airport. There was a German girl in the hostel (Tina) that had a flight at a similar time, so I asked her if she wanted to hang out until then and then share the cost of the taxi to the airport. She agreed and we went to a place in the city which was called Paotere. While we were walking in tha direction, a man approached us with a bike-pushed cart. He spoke almost no English, but somehow we understood that he would charge us 1000 IDR (a bemo costs 3000 IDR) to get us there. When we got to the place he said it was 50.000 IDR. We paid him 10.000 IDR.

It was very picturesque, chaotic and dirty street with all kinds of stores and it ran along parallel to a pier.

After walking around and taking photos we went back to the area near the hostel and went to get some lunch. Afterwards, back at the hostel and we got the taxi to the airport where we sent our separate ways. From then I had a connecting flight in Jakarta to get to Manila.



I didn’t sleep on the plane and arrived in Manila at 5:30am. After I cleared customs I went out of the airport and saw May Gallardo, a former classmate of mine in the American International School (AIS) of Israel (between ‘92 and ‘93). The main reason I had to go to Manila in particular was to catch up with May after all these years. She spent a lot of time in that school and has always been very keen to keep in touch with her former classmates. We got on her UT and the first place she took me to was the Peninsula Hotel, to have breakfast (an expensive option), but we were hoping to find Adam Lifshitz, another classmate of ours from the AIS, who worked there. Adam wasn’t in the hotel at the time, but we had breakfast there nevertheless.

After that we went for a city tour. I hadn’t slept the previous night, so I was in a zombie-kind of state, but decided to make it the whole day without rest, just to get back to a normal schedule.

The first stop was a bizarre one. She took me to a place called “Puzzle Castle”. She said she had always been curious about visiting it. This is a place in which are stored more than 1.000 jigsaw puzzles of all shapes and sizes (even spherical and 3D ones). The woman who owns it has made them for 27 years and holds the Guinness World of Records for the largest collection of jigsaw puzzles in the world. After that odd place, we went to have some coffee and look at the view of Lake Tagaytay. This is a fresh water lake formed by a massive crater. Within the lake, there’s a smaller volcano that’s still active. The views are fantastic

Later, had lunch in a small shopping center in a place where she usually hangs around with friends and then went to her house where I met her parents and I dropped my bags.

ast activity of the day was going to a bar called “Whistlestop”, a place that’s open 24/7 and has been so since 1977. There, we finally met with Adam, an Australian-English-Israeli who works in the hotel industry. He had just finished working in the Peninsula Hotel in Manila and got offered a job in the Waldorf Astoria that’s opening in Jerusalem in a few months. He was going to Israel in less than a week, so the timing was perfect. We had a great time chatting about the school, recreating memories from 20 years ago, catching up on each other’s lives and having beers. After that, we went back home; I hadn’t slept in about 40 hours.



Next day, we woke up late, just in time for lunch with the family (just like any weekend back home). After an excellent homemade meal we headed out to have coffee at May’s usual hanging out place. In the afternoon we went to play billiards (May is quite good and I’m terrible at it, so she beat me easily). At around 7pm we met with friends of hers and her boyfriend. We had some beers and then we all went to play billiards again until about midnight.



I was due to fly out the next day to Cebu City (in Cebu Island) and before going to the airport I asked May if she could take me to a few shopping centers because I wanted to look for good trekking shoes. We spent several hours looking in shops and had lunch in a pizza place before she took me to the airport.



I arrived in Cebu at around 9pm and got a taxi to get to a cheap place to stay: “Sugbutel”. This place was recommended by a friend of May. In this place, there are rooms like in any hotel and dormitories that can be from 130 people. I stayed in the “VIP” dormitory, which is pretty much the same, but with cubicles that accommodate 4 people. The bathrooms of course are shared. On the upside, it’s pretty cheap and very clean. It’s brand new and has a lot of staff. It’s also well organized and is a quiet place in general, as most of the guests are whole families. For the price I thought it was a good deal.

I didn’t intent to stay in Cebu more than necessary and all I wanted to do is get to Malapascua as soon as possible. In the morning I went to a shopping center (“SM”) to buy a new battery for my dive computer, checked my mails in a coffee place and got hit on by one of the baristas there.



At around noon I went to the North Bus Terminal where I got on a bus to get to a small town called Maya, where I had to take a boat to get to Malapascua. The bus company that does the trip is “Ceres” and an A/C bus costs 170PHP (Philippine Peso) and a non A/C, 163PHP.

I arrived in Maya at around 4:30pm. I was warned about the characteristic scam there: people will tell tourists that the last boat to the island already left, but that for a “fair” price they offer to take you. A normal ticket costs 80PHP.

Sure enough when I got there, a boy told me exactly that and kindly offered to take me for 1200PHP (I would’ve been paying for 14 pax!). I told him that I would wait for more tourists to arrive (I was the only one there) and he said that there could be no one else arriving (of course). I just decided to wait and a while later we were 6. And about an hour later we had a regular boat that took us to the island for the normal price.

Malapascua was my favorite destination in the Philippines – If I would’ve known, I would left it for last.



When I got there it was getting dark and I had no idea where to book accommodation for the night. As is usual I stumbled in a pretty good place by chance. The place is called “Purple Snapper” and had good cheap rooms and a small dive shop (which I prefer rather than big ones that tend to be more over crowded). In less than an hour I had a place to sleep and booked 3 dives for the next day. The small dive shop was managed by a New Zealander, James and in the staff there were 2 Spanish; Lydia and Ángel.

There’s not much to do in Malapascua besides diving. The main attractions in the island are the Thresher Sharks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thresher_shark) which can be seen early in the morning when they go from deep waters to shallower ones to get to “cleaning stations”. Awesome sharks.



I decided to do that dive the next morning, so I woke up at 4:30am and met James and a French couple who were also going, Vanessa and Xavier.

Fortunately, the guys at Purple Snapper leave before all the other dive shops, as a standard practice, so when we got to the site (Monad Shoal) we had the place to ourselves for about 20 minutes. After that, it was chaotic, with divers all over the place.

We got to see the sharks and they’re remarkable, with their long scythe-like caudal fin. It was a wonderful spectacle and definitely worth the trip and waking up early.



Back from the dive I had breakfast and then I had 2 more dives that day, again with Vanessa and Xavier. Ángel was our guide for those dives. The sites were called Deep Rock and Chocolate Island (although disappointingly it wasn’t made of chocolate). Both dives were excellent and in incredible surroundings. I liked all the dives I did in Malapascua. Most fo the dives in Malapascua was about the small stuff (nudibranchs, seahorses and so on).



After the dives and we went back to the island, and I joined Vanessa and Xavier for a massage in the beach. Totally worth the money and afterwards we had a few drinks in the beach at sunset. To finish the day, we went to a small store (Poppo’s Eatery) that sold local food (extremely cheap) and we took it back to Purple Snapper where we complemented it with beers.



The second day of diving was to a place called “Calamangan”. We dived in two sites which were close to this island; both wall dives. Between the dives we had the surface interval in Calamangan Island. This island has so far been the closest to the typical paradise island destination photo you can see in travel agencies and travel magazines. It’s just a patch of white sand, surrounded by crystal-clear water. Some palm trees, a few shacks and facilities for people to go there and have picnics with the family (as a lot of locals do during the weekends). There’s no accommodation, but it’s possible to camp there, I think. A lot of us were thinking of how cool it’d be to get a big group of friends and have an overnight party in that island – Bacardi style.



I did the third dive of the day close to Malapascua Island. A night dive with Ángel in a site called “Lighthouse” (because it’s right in front of the island’s lighthouse). We went looking for mandarin fish – a very small colorful fish that’s really hard to see. We didn’t find any, but there were a lot other night critters there – crabs, shrimps, seahorses, cuttlefish, etc.



That night I had something to eat in a local grill – a woman with her kids grilled all kinds of meat and another woman sold drinks right in front of them. Meat and beer: perfect combination. That night I joined Angel and a few of his friends for a few games of darts and pool.







The last 2 dives I did were in Gato Island. The first dive was all about the small stuff again - frogfish, seahorses, nudibranchs, etc. the second dive we started the dive going through a 10-20 meter swim through which was really cool. After this swim through we stumbled upon a few sharks; white tips. The biggest white tip I've seen so far.

In the afternoon I walked to the lighthouse at sunset to get some photos. On the way out there I stumbled upon people training roosters for cockfighting (these are usually held on Sundays). Quite a spectacle, as I hadn't seen one before.



The last day in Malapascua i used it to wake up late and read. I exchanged the previous book I was reading for a novel written by Ken Follet: "World without end". This is the sequel to "The pillars of the earth" which I had read about 10 years ago.



To sum it up - Malapascua is pretty much a diver's destination. The island is super chilled and the surrounding islands and dive sites are paradise.

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Photos

AIS reunion
May, Daniel, Adam

Comments

[Andres]

saludos desde Lonquen
Hola Dani, que bueno leer tu blog nuevamente. Se te echaba de menos. Por acá todos bien. La proxima semana tendremos vendimia. Ayer celebramos el cumpleaños de la abuela Odette y el viernes fue la celebracion de La Trini con sus compañeras de curso que estaba pendiente desde hace 1 mes. Como ves bien movido. un fuerte abrazo Andres