Boracay madness!

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This morning we woke up a little earlier than for our other flight because this time the maximum baggage allowed is only 10 kgs! I don't know how anyone can pack that lightly, but I think it’s because the planes they take to Caticlan are smaller than the others. Anyways, we needed to go to their cargo to send a bag full of our extra kilos, the cheaper option. We took a taxi, paid the 200, and weighed and reweighed our overweight bags until we had only 10 kilos each, sent the cargo, and walked to the terminal.

The flight was very fast and didn’t even take an hour. They are in the process of building the airport building, so when we got off the tarmac we just waited by the side for our bags before walking out to the street. I had read that the jetty port was a quick walk or ride by trike, so we decided to walk. It took about five minutes to walk to the jetty port and there you have to buy your ticket as well as pay the environmental and terminal fees.

We had to scan our bags again and go through security, but we walked right onto a waiting boat. The ride took about 15 minutes and there were people at the port waiting to take the tourists to resorts/beaches/etc. We had looked at a map and seen that the distance between the port and station three wasn’t very much so we decided to walk instead of paying 25 each for a tricycle. After 5ish minutes walking, one offered to take us for 15 total. At least that’s what we thought…as we were passing station 3 he told us that station 2 was actually cheaper, so he agreed to take us there for "20 total". After getting off there we quickly realized we’d been duped, and that this was definitely fancier. He also demanded 50 (I had only given him 20) and so after Ronald argued with him a bit, we gave him another 20.

We walked for a while on the street looking for places but in retrospect I think it would have been better to walk along the beach path. We got a room at St. Vicent’s for 800 (fan, two beds, tv, private bathroom, cold water) but after we headed to the beach we passed a couple with signs for a room for 500 and even one that had dorms for 200! Oh well.

The mission of the afternoon was to find me a place to go scuba diving with. All of the prices are the same so there it was really about finding a suitable place that fit your style. There were Chinese places, Korean places, Filipino places, foreign places, every sort of vibe you could hope to imagine. I decided to go with National Geographic Divers, located in the Calypso Resort. The guy was nice, spoke great English, and told me for the Yapak dive I would need to first go on a different dive with them to prove I had the ability to go to the harder location. That attitude made me feel good because they were showing they cared about safety, or at least pretended to. So I signed up for two dives, one at 9 am and the other at 12.

We continued walking along the beach and found a place that gave us a monster Piña Colada for 370 so we drank that before continuing back up to station 1, the fancier part. There we watched the sun set through the cloudy sky and had a drink at a fancy place before moving back to our more affordable area. I cannot believe how many people there are here! It’s so crowded.

Technical details
-Boat ticket from Caticlan to Boracay: 25.00
-Environmental fee: 50.00
-One dive including equipment rental: 1,600.00
-The boats are unlike what I’ve done before where you go out for the whole day – these go out only for the one dive and then bring you back. The locations are all close to the beach so it doesn’t take long to go and come back.

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