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Published: February 10th 2009
Getting here was arduous but without any major snafus. There was one major disappointment however. Our flight was at a reasonable hour, 11am, how unusual. We caught a cab to O'Hare at 8, cleared security at the international terminal and pushed back for our 14 hour flight to Narita Airport near Tokyo. Fourteen hours is a long time to be couped up, sleep is your friend. After the first meal was served we dropped a couple Ambien and before we knew it half the flight was over. We both brought lots of reading material, but mostly watched stupid movies. I really enjoyed Wall-e, what a time killer. I watched half of it with no sound trying to figure out what was going on then broke down and watched it with sound the next time it started. This is what you do to kill the time. The big plus was that the food was quite good for the altitude, We have become accustomed to terrible food on domestic flights, but Japan Airlines exceeded our very low expectations.
The big disappointment came at Narita. The last time we were there, coming home from the Philippines two years ago, we had amazingly good sushi at a little restaurant there. It's kind of surprising, but there are not many restaurants there. There are at least 20 duty free shops, but only 3 restaurants. When last we were there one served very good sushi. On this trip we found it's space occupied by a nasty looking buffet. Fourteen hours anticipating good sushi only to be disappointed.
We arrived in Manila at about 10:30 and made our way to our hotel, the Citystate Tower Hotel. They had a decent restaurant, oddly enough, open 24 hours, and we shared a plate of stir fry. Not tired in the least, we dropped ambiens at 1:00 and got up at 6:30 to continue on our way to Sabang.
Our bus left at 8 bound for Batangas, a 3 hour ride. It was a nice aircon bus. From there we caught our ferry at 11:15 to Sabang. Our ferry was a 50 foot Bangka. Bangkas are out rigger boats that are absolutely ubiquitous here. They range in size from one person fishing boats to 75+ foot ferries. It was a little rough at times, but we stayed dry. The trip took an hour and a half. Once in Sabang, a beach landing, it was a 10 minute walk up the beach to Sabang Villa Hotel. They had a very basic apartment available for 1500 pisos (about $30). It had a little propane two burner stove but no pots or pans. Oh well. We got there at about 1:00, bringing the elapsed time of our trip to about 48 hours, door to door.
Sabang Villa is a pretty basic German run resort with about 30 rooms. Octopus Divers, a 5 star PADI dive operation is on premises, which is why we picked it. The restaurant and bar had just re-opened under new management. It was quite good and very reasonably priced. Filipino dishes were about $4 and German dishes were $5.
We did our first dive the next day, Thursday February 6. The site was called Hole in the Wall. Every dive area seems to have one. On this one the little swim through was at the end of the dive. It was a very good dive. We saw many different types of nudibranchs, lion fish, scorpionfish and a lizardfish as well as all of the usual suspects, triggerfish, morish idols, butterfly fish, anenome fish..... We both have new 5 mil wetsuits. I guessed at the right amount of weight for the new suit and got it wrong, in the wrong direction, too little. I had to swim to get down but thought that once my suit got wet I would be OK. I was wrong. Instead of floating neutrally at 15 feet on my safety stop at the end of the dive, I did mine upside down finning hard for 3 minutes to keep from popping up. I came up with 200 psi. The next day I added 2 kilos and was fine.
We decided our place was not clean enough or quiet enough to stay. Our place was just outside the resort on the path leading up the hill to another resort and local homes. There is one road into Sabang from Puerto Galera, but otherwise it is all footpaths leading up from the sidewalk along the waterfront. There is a lot of traffic all hours of the day and night. It was especially loud from 11-2 when the guys were bringing their “dates” from the bars. Sabang is a destination for two reasons, diving and the sex trade. The latter being very common throughout the Philippines.
Searching for paca waca.
We did a very thorough survey. We figured that the further we got from the center of Sabang and it's nightlife the quieter it would be. We started at the far end of Sabang beach, skipped the central part of Sabang and then went on to Little Laguna and Big Laguna beaches. All only accessible by walking along the beach, a distance of about 1.5 miles. We found two places we liked in our price range, less than $40. One on Little Laguna and one at the end of Sabang near our place but way up the hill. Feeling a little lazy, not wanting to have to have to move all our dive gear after just 1 day of diving, we went for Oriental Sabang Hill Resort. In this case the Oriental refers to it's location at the eastern end of the “beach”, which at this end is a breakwall. Even at it's best it is never a great beach, 30 feet wide and stony. White Beach is the best beach in the area. It is a 1.5 mile strand with good width. It is 25 minutes away by bangka.
We spent a second night at Sabang Vila, dove the next morning, Friday, packed up and moved the couple hundred yards as the crow flies to the new place. It turned out to be a good move. They gave us a pretty good deal,1400 pisos for a room (rack 1800)., It was very clean and well appointed, if not a little small, with a nice patio out front with a great sunset view of the bay. There is no kitchen but we have a fridge and they agreed to supply us with bowls so we could eat cold cereal in the morning. I really hate to have to go out to breakfast every morning. The owner, Stefan, is Swedish, and there is a nice mix of nationalities with another couple or two thrown in to mix it up. Our old place was German owned, it was all single German guys. Typical German dive resort diver resort. Not that I have anything against Germans, it's just that there are a lot of German travelers. If you stay at a German resort it will be mostly Germans, it can be hard to if you do not speak German. A Swedish run resort is necessarily going to be more mixed. As for “typical” dive resorts, they are pretty basic affairs. Divers are cheap when it comes to accommodations, they are spending on diving too. We spend as much or more on diving as we do on food, drink and hotel.
It rained off and on all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Rain is not a problem for diving. It is better when there is more light at depth the colors are better. The rain itself is not a problem, we are wet anyway.
It rained on Monday again. It was a little brighter and warmer. The weather seems to be changing. We did two dives. The first dive was Shark Cave. We dropped down to the bottom at about 80 feet and stuck our heads into this wide little cavern and there was a 10-12 foot white tip shark sleeping. Other highlights included a boxing shrimp, anenome crab, lots of nudibranchs, and a couple of porcupine fish. After lunch we went inside the natural harbor formed by the islands here and did a site called gian clam. It did not disappoint, there were scores of giant clams up to 5 feet wide. Very impressive. In the sand we found at least a dozen sea horses, a cuttle fish and of course more nudi's.
On Tuesday the sun finally came out. We dove in the morning at Canyons, a deep dive about 100 feet. It was a drift dive. We dropped down into the “canyons”, got out of the current and watched schools of sweetlips and snappers. In the afternoon we went over to White Beach. One of the floating bars organized the trip. It was a rowdy affair. For 300 pisos (100 for women) we got an overloaded bangka (70 people, capacity 25) to the beach with all the San Miguel beer we could drink on the 20 ride there and back. We landed at a bar on the beach with a volleyball net and they organized teams. It was a lot of fun, my team came in second in the tourney. Lots of western guys with their Filippina girlfriends . Most seemed to be here longer term. But some were just tourists like us here for a week or two. Karen was the only white girl.
No pics yet, have not taken many. I'm going to take some later today and try to post them tomorrow.
Until then, it's paca waca found.
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Mark
non-member comment
Wall-e
indeed.... a pure cinematic delight!