Anilao 2024

We were kind of slackers about coming up with vacation plans for this year.  This was a combination of complex work/travel calendars to plan around and just being lazy.  So in early July, I realized if we were going to go anywhere, we'd better make plans.  We decided on Anilao because it is relatively easy to get to, and we only had a week, and we liked it the last time we went.  Since United now has a direct flight from SFO to Manila, it was *very* easy to get there.  Getting back was not quite as easy, since the direct flight back is at an annoying time (that would require an overnight in Manila), but still in the scheme of things, having one stop in Hong Kong is a pretty easy journey.  It was also easy because we already knew where to stay, having stayed at (and liked) Buceo Anilao before

Some thoughts on Anilao... last time we went, I said that if I came back, I'd want to come at a different time of year.  We ended up coming the exact same week as last time, and I still think if I went again, I'd want to go at a different time of years.  There are a lot of critters that are not around in the summer, when the water is *crazy* hot.  I had 84 to 86 degrees the entire week.  I was pulling on the neck of my wetsuit to let water in, because it was so hot underwater!  

Some thoughts on Buceo Anilao... much like last time, I thought that the room was fine, the food was fine, the pool was nice, the bar was good, the diving was great, and the guides were super great.  Our guide for most of the week, Joemar, was amazing at finding teeny tiny slugs and things, and also herding slugs into a position where you could actually get a look at them.  We stayed in the Mantis Shrimp room, which was annoying far up the stairs (further than where we stayed last time, in Ghost Pipefish).  Also like last time, there were some regular kitties that made appearances in the restaurant and around the resort, which were fun to watch.

Alright, to the important part...

Anilao 2024: Day 1

Anilao 2024: Day 2

Anilao 2024: Day 3

Anilao 2024: Day 4

Anilao 2024: Day 5

Anilao 2024: Day 6

Anilao 2024: Day 7

Anilao 2024: Day 7

The last day of diving. Sigh. Joemar was off today, so we had a different DM named Benjie. For the first dive, we went to The Corner, which is right at the point by the hotel, but not exactly the same spot as where we found the Pygmy’s. I think it is where we did our first night dive though. I also think (on,y after having dived it) that Rob may have shot wide angle here on a dive on our last trip. Anyway, I think this would make a good wide angle site. There are at least two spots that have decent sized pinnacles that are buzzing with fish and very encrusted. On one of these, which is more of a ridge than a pinnacle, which a wall that goes for a bit, we saw a big turtle. I watched and followed him for a bit, and then he settled down and started munching on the reef.

The dive wasn’t too productive for Rob, from a shooting macro perspective. I think there were a good number and variety of big nudibranchs. Rob thinks these are all boring (he even has a somewhat annoying underwater hand signal for this). I don’t think they are boring to look at, I think he just finds them boring to shoot. It’s not fun if it’s easy. I twisted his arm into shooting a few that I liked the looks of. Other than nudis, Benjie found a harlequin shrimp but it was in a hole, and it was really in its hold by the time Rob came to look. He also found a nice frogfish. So not a total bust from a critter perspective, but I think the wide angle scenery was the highlight.

After that we went back to Vivere to look for Shaun the sheep’s. This is a big sand slope with not that much on it. But a lot of those little green leaves that the sheep nudis live on. I spent a lot of the dive going from green leaf to green leaf looking for Shaun’s the sheep. The things I do for Rob. Amazingly, I found two of them. One was pretty big, though it was a bit of an ordeal, as I knocked the nudi off of the leaf and oh boy did he not want to settle back down on there. The other one was insanely tiny. I don’t know if Rob even bothered to try to shoot it. Aside from those, quite a few of the blue and yellow sheep were found (not by me) and several of them were quite big. So I guess it was a success from the perspective of sheep finding. Benjie also found a black frogfish with white toes. Rob didn’t take its picture. I guess he is truly jaded.

After lunch, for our last dive of the trip, we went to Bubbles Point. We were told that bubbles would come out of the sand because of volcanic activity, and the sand was warm. This sounded interesting. As soon as we got to the bottom, I realized we’d been here on our last trip, even though the description had not sounded at all familiar. There were indeed bubbles coming out of the sand (which reminded me of the eye in Ginnie) and the sand felt warm in spots. Also, the water was very warm in spots, but it was really not uniform… I saw a 4 degree swing across the site. The site was a mix of sand and coral, there were kind of these coral fingers pointing down the slope, with sand in between. It was not the most productive dive from a macro perspective, it Rob found a teeny tiny aeolid that he claimed was his best find of the trip. There was also a sea turtle, much smaller than the one from this morning. But he also plopped on the reef and started munching on various things. Rob tried to take pictures (with his macro lens).

Rob ran out of gas, well he was down to 200 psi but I think he didn’t want to admit to this so instead of going on my long hose, which I kept offering, he kept saying to just stay with him on the swim up. When we got to 20 feet I insisted he go on my long hose, because watching and waiting for him to run out of gas seemed like more work than putting him on my long hose. So we did that and luckily Benjie did not freak out. I was a bit worried about that. When we surfaced, Rob said it wouldn’t be a warm water trip without having to go on my long hose a couple of times. Lol.

After we got back to the resort, we took apart our gear. Boohoo.

Anilao 2024: Day 6

In the morning we returned to Kirby’s Rock to look for the Pygmy seahorse again. Today we traversed the site in the opposite direction from last time. We started on top of the wall, went down the wall, around the outside of the little side pinnacle, then back through the channel with the gorgonian with the Pygmy on it. Unfortunately no Pygmy was found today. Boohoo. But near that spot, Joemar found two more of the pink tipped orange nudi that I really like, and they were pretty big and on an attractive background.

I may have mentioned this before but this site has a zillion little moray eels, including a few that I saw swimming out in the open. I found one hole with two morays just poking their snouts out constantly opening and closing their mouths. Very cute. The other highlights of the dive were two frogfish… one big gray-purple one and one small white one. They were both on the main pinnacle. Other than that spent much of the dive enjoying all of the fish life in the water column… tons of anthias and blue triggerfish.

After the dive we stopped at a little village on the water on Maricaban island, so the crew could buy some fishing lures. While they were off doing that we enjoyed viewing the local wildlife, which included a goat, a cat and a kitten, a dog, and several chickens. Then we headed to the next dive site which was just a bit further down the island. This site had a slope with patches of coral. I found this dive to be a bit of a dud, though many slugs and such were found, it wasn’t that productive and there was not much that was super notable. Joemar did find a nice magenta edge ribbon with these dark reds slugs in it. We’d seen some of these earlier in the week,but they were nice bushy specimens. I found a shy octopus under a ledge as well.

We got back pretty early so I had a long non-nap after lunch. For the afternoon dive, we were once again on the alternate boat. We went to a site just down from the hotel, past Twin Rocks but still in front of planet dive. It was a San slope with coral patches. The slope went down a ways. I made it past 90 feet and we spent a while in the 75 foot range. The dive wasn’t super productive in terms of number of finds, but there were some good ones. First and most important… a pikachu nudi!!! Well it was the white version so not sure I can call it that. A purple dragon nudi (not sure if that’s the real name or just what I call it). A big sea snake right at the end near the surface. And a big school of various fish, including jacks, also near the surface at the end. There were tons of fish streaming by on the bottom all through the dive, but it wasn’t until I came up shallower near the end that I saw these big schools in the water column.

For the night dive, we dove the house reef. But we got into the boat, which took us just a little bit to the right of the resort and dropped us in, with the plan being that we would swim back and exit from the beach. With people to take our tanks out of the water for us of course :P. It was a pretty productive dive from the nudibranchs standpoint. I once again managed to find a bunch of hydroid nudis! On one hydroid bush, I found 5 slugs of 3 different kinds. The longer I looked, the more I saw. I guess the highlight of the dive (even though I was very impressed with my nudi finding skills) was a bobtail squid! It was in the shallows very close to the resort, as we were wrapping up the dive. It was not really in the mood to swim around for us and show off its bobtail… it kept sinking into the sand. But still, an uncooperative bobtail squid is better than none :P

When we surfaced, there were dive staff in the water waiting for us to take our rigs off so they could carry them out for us. This seemed a bit lame to me, but I went along with it. I did insist on carrying my own fins. Rob was not playing along though and just walked out of the water in his rig. Which then made me feel a bit lame for not doing the same. But not that lame. It’s vacation after all ;)

My evening cocktail tonight was a Mai tai. It was very sweet, even for a Mai tai. And very alcoholic. Whew.

Anilao 2024: Day 5

Well this morning as we approached the dive shop to get into our suits, the coast guard guys were already there, so that was a good sign. Rob had been told to pack wide angle, because we were going to go to some specific site (since it was our boat mates’ last day of diving). But it looked like a storm was brewing and the wind was definitely picking up in the morning, so at the last minute we changed plans and Rob switched to macro. We went to Dari Laut, a wreck that we went to last time. It consists mostly of a steel grid structure that was corals and encrusting life all over it. Further down the slope there is part of the hull, which isn’t quite as interestingly encrusted. The spot is about 25 minutes away, across the channel and in the little channel between Maricaban and Caban islands. It was pretty sporty on the ride over, but the dive site was in a protected spot.

A lot of the good finds on the dive, which were mostly tiny nudibranchs, were found in the rubble area outside of the super structure, between it and the hull. On the structure itself, I think the highlights were two frogfish. One was yellow and brown and was sitting right on top of part of the superstructure, in a not particularly well hidden spot. But yet well hidden at the same time, since he blended in with everything pretty well. I’m sure there were lots more that we didn’t see! The one other notable find on the dive was an electric clam. I was excited to see this, since it was the other thing I told Rob the day before that I still wanted to see. Oh one last thing on this dive… another sea snake! It just kind of swam by at the beginning of the dive.

When we surfaced, the conditions had laid down a lot. We moved down to the next site, which was just past Olympic Point, and hung out there for the surface interval. The site had a slope with patches of coral. There were plenty of critters but nothing particularly notable. I guess most notable was that I managed to find some small slugs all by myself :)

For the afternoon dive, we switched boats (but still had Joemar as our guide) since between both boats, we were only 5 people. We went to Mainit West, the spot at the point super close to the resort, so that Rob could get more Pygmy seahorse pics. This time I believe there was only one seahorse found on that gorgonian. I think Rob spent like 15 minutes with it. This was the highlight of the dive. Other than that, we saw the usual assortment of slugs and such, but nothing particularly notable. We did find a surprising number of hairy crabs in those bulbous anemones.

For the night dive, it was just me and Rob (and Joemar). We went to a sandy slope site around the point, in front of the resort where we took the boat from when we arrived. Joemar said we’d look for nudis and probably find more Shauns the sheep for Rob. So I was prepared for an amazing(ly boring) dive watching Rob take pictures of little green leaves. It turned out to be quite a bit more exciting though. There were some Shaun the sheep sightings, but in addition, we found tons of tiny slugs, including quite a few that I found myself on hydroids. Mmmm, tiny slugs on hydroids, my favorite. But definitely the best find of all was a tiny baby frogfish. It was bright yellow and less than an inch long. When Joemar first showed it to us, I could tell it was a tiny adorable fish but it took me a moment to see its webbed paws and realize what I was looking at. So cute! Other than that, we saw the usual assortment of neat little crabs, shrimps, and fish.

Tonight I learned from my mistakes and had a mango colada.

Anilao 2024: Day 4

Rob decided to shoot wide angle today and asked that we go to some wide angle sites, given how nice the one we went to yesterday was.  We were a bit delayed to leave due to waiting for someone from the coast guard to come and clear us to leave. I’m not sure what the deal is, but for some reason, this was required every morning.  There was no clear explanation for this except that it was something new that must be done everyday. So some dude in military fatigues showed up, looked at some papers and the boats and then we could go.  Once that was finally done, we also went to a very far away site, the furthest we’d been yet, so it was a late start once we got in the water. 

There was some explanation about current and depending on the current, we’d go here or there, which didn’t make a lot of sense, but basically we dropped into an area with what I’d describe as a bunch of coral pinnaclets, and a drop off, and some current that made it not that desirable to go to some areas of the site. There were zillions of anthias in the water clustered around various coral heads, plus lots of other tropical fish. Lots of blue triggerfish. The occasional trumpetfish. And I saw one barracuda swoop through and harass the other fish.  Not a lot happened on the dive, since I was basically just drifting around in the aquarium. Initially tried to pose for some pics,but the anthias seemed super shy, which was frustrating Rob, so I figured the more bubbles, the shyer they’d be, so I wandered off. 

I did make one good find on the dive. Very good, I think. I was drifting along as previously described and I saw a sea snake slithering over the top of a coral ridge!  It was black and white striped. I of course thought this was super exciting.  Rob was not too far, but just out of light sight along range, staring through his camera. So I swam a little towards him, turned my light up to high power, and vigorously signaled him. It was the “either I’m dying or there’s a GPO” signal. And he gave me a “hold” sign without even looking over at me. Eye roll, eye roll, eye roll.  By the time he came over and I swam him back to the spot… no sea snake. I had a fit and yelled at Rob. Then I managed to convey what he had missed. Luckily a couple minutes later I found it a couple coral heads away.  So we watched and followed it for a while. 

We moved over to another pretty close site and anchored there for our surface interval. There was a catastrophic failure of the hot water thermos, so we had to settle for cold water and oreos to snack on.  It was super flat and super nice out today. 

When we first dropped in on this site, I found it pretty unimpressive. It did not seems to have nearly as many fish as the previous site.  There was a slope with corals, but it just wasn’t nearly as pretty.  Before we got moving, Joemar got our attention to show us a sea snake!  We watched it for a while, and it hung out for pictures. Then it headed to the surface. We continued on to a drop off, which was actually pretty nice.  I guess the spot we dropped on just wasn’t the best. There were some big gorgonian things hanging on the side that were worth posing next to. But the best finds of the dive were frogfish. Big frogfish. There were four that we found, and boy were they big. Two of them actually swam around a bit for us which was kind of awkward. I think it’s about what I’d look like trying to swim in my gear without my fins on. 

There was also a neat overhang on the wall, kind of a little cave, which was super colorful inside and had quite a few fish in there, including some kinds of fish that I didn’t see outside. After that, we came up the wall and Rob managed to find a coral head with a bunch of anthias that seemed not that skittish.  He sent me up to 10 feet to pose as a silhouette for a long while. By then it was pretty much time to call the dive. Joemar put a bag up and we waited for the boat to come and pick us up. 

For our afternoon dive, we went to a spot just down from the hotel to the right. It had patches of coral/rubble on the sand.  The highlight of the dive was a flamboyant cuttlefish!  Just before the dive, as we were walking to the boat, Rob was talking about other critters to “request” and I mentioned flamboyant cuttlefish. I didn’t even put in my request and I got one!  Aside from that, Joemar found plenty of nudis, including a lot of the purple aeolids with peach rhinophores. There were so many of those that even I found a few. Joemar also found some of the nudibranchs that look like flesh colored soft corals… which I’ve been looking for every time I see a small patch of the soft coral that could instead be a slug. Oh and last but not least, there was a HUGE sea snake. I guess maybe they aren’t so uncommon after all!

For the night dive we went to twin rocks, where we did our first dive of the trip. It wasn’t super productive but there were some good finds… a mantis shrimp with eggs, which was the first of the trip.  Five cuttlefish, ranging from really small to pretty average sized. Of course the really small one was the first one that we found. They were all quite skittish and not well behaved photo subjects :(. And right before the end of the dive, Joemar pointed out a big crab wearing clothing.  I’m not sure what it was that he had on its back, it was probably a piece of a palm fronds or something, but it was a sheet of something fibrous that kind of looked like a burlap sack. I’m not sure if it was stuck to the crab intentionally (like a decorator crab) or not, but I wasn’t going to try to undress the crab. 

I had a mudslide before dinner. It was on the specials list, and I wanted something creamy. And I’m a sucker for drink specials. It was no mango colada. 

Anilao 2024: Day 3

We woke to (finally) sunny conditions and lake flat conditions on the water, phew. For the first dive of the day, we went across the channel to a site called Bethlehem. It started around 20 feet and sloped down to about 65 feet, where there was a side flat rubble field, which was a treasure trove of macro critters! Joemar found so many tiny slugs, probably between 10 and 15 different kinds, mostly presented to us on a silver plate for photography :P. There were also some good crabs and shrimps, including one of the ones that lives on a wire coral, and some popcorn shrimp in one of those bulbous anemones.

Between dives we headed to the next site, called Layag, and hung out on the boat during the surface interval. Eventually we finally got back in. This site was super awesome, with beautiful coral heads covered with anthias and other tropical fish. There were zillions of crinoids in all different colors. It would have made for a great wide angle dive. Rob was shooting macro, though, and there were tons of great subjects. Joemar found a boxer crab right at the start (the ones with pompoms on their paws), plus there was a frogfish, a blue and yellow ribbon eel, a mantis shrimp, lots of nudis, and a dancing sweetlips. Overall a great dive site, one of the nicer patches of reef I’ve seen on this trip or our previous one here.

After lunch and a non-nap, we went back out to a spot very close to the hotel, right at the point. It was around where we did the night dive last night. The site was a slope down to 75 or so feet with patches of coral, but more patches than not patches. Actually the slope continues a bit deeper but it thins out to mostly sand. We spent a lot of time down around 75 feet. The highlight of the dive was a sea fan with not one but two Pygmy seahorses! They were the pinkish purple ones that I think are prettier than the one we’d seen yesterday. And one of the two was pretty big, well as big as I think they come. I could see it pretty well with my eyes. Joemar found these pretty early in the dive and Rob kept going back to the sea fan to get a few more pics.

Other than this, we saw a variety of nudis, and one small one that looked like it had only a single rhinophore. It was actually a non-nudi slug, a head-shielded slug known as a batwing slug. It was tiny with big spots, pretty cool looking for a non-nudibranch :P. One other find on the dive was some tiny eel type thing that was slithering around in a coral. Joemar says it had a bulbous head (I could just see its head was white versus a black or dark red body) but I don’t think Rob managed to get a pic. One other notable thing about this dive was that Rob got very low on gas and I had to share gas with him back to the boat. How embarrassing. When we surfaced the wind had picked up and little waves were breaking over my head. Luckily it was only like 2 minutes back to the hotel.

We hung out at the pool for a while and then headed back out for a night dive. The wind had calmed down. We went to a site around the point and a few minutes past it. It was a sandy slope it wasn’t the most productive dive. There was a lot of swimming around not finding anything but there were a few good finds. Very early on, Joemar found a small but not tiny octopus slithering around on the sand. And much later, after a lot of not seeing much, he found a really cool nudi on a hydroid, which I know we’ve seen before in the Philippines. But while we were looking at that, a tiny translucent squid suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Rob miraculously managed to actually get some shots of it, even though it looked like sea trash drifting in the water. We saw a second one of those tiny translucent squids a bit later, which looked even more like a tiny bit of sea trash. Other than that, there were a few other nudis and the usual assortment of small crabs and shrimp.

Tonight I had a pina colada.

Anilao 2024: Day 2

When we woke up, it was like we were in the middle of a hurricane. It was raining and windy and there were crazy gusts. The rain stopped before we went for breakfast and the wind slowly decreased as we were getting ready to go. We headed across the channel to Kirby’s Rock, which I remembered from our previous trip once the briefing started. I remembered thinking it would be a good place for wide angle but Rob had packed macro. Oh well. Anyway, it was windy but not too crazy by the time we left, and the ride over was okay.

At first the dive site was rubble reef and I couldn’t remember what I thought was so great about the site. But I guess this was just on the way to the main spot. We poked around and found a few critters on the way to the big side pinnacle down the slope. Once we got over to there I noticed both of the guides down in a crack and saw a big coral-colored sea fan, and realized they were looking for a Pygmy seahorse. So I hung nearby in case it worked out. And it did! There was a teeny teeny tiny little Pygmy seahorse in there, which Joemar miraculously managed to find! Once he found it, it seemed like Rob spent like most of the dive trying to get that shot. I guess macro was the right lens for the dive.

Aside from the Pygmy, Joemar found a very pretty little orange and pink and white slug that I’ve seen once before and for some reason I really like, though it’s probably not objectively the most amazing slug. I just like the color combination. Aside from slugs, I saw a couple different scorpionfish on the dive, and a zillion little moral eels, including several free swimming. Oh and when we made it to the main rock, there were a ton of little tropical fish zooming around, and the overhang on the wall was very cool. Plus there was a cute bugger frogfish hanging on the side of the wall. I still think it would be a good site for wide angle though macro was the right lens for today!

After that we went to the next site and anchored and hung out there for a while for our surface interval. The water had turned totally flat during the first dive, which was nice. The site was Olympic point (named for the nearby hotel), and it was a muck dive with a sandy bottom with scattered little coral bits. It was an insanely productive macro dive. There was a cool pair of nudis and their eggs in a coral egg bubble (which kind of blew my mind), a leaf scorpionfish, a black ribbon eel, and that was all within like one 10 foot stretch. We saw tons of cool little crabs and shrimp in anemones, corals, and on the backs of urchins. By the end of the dive, there were some patches of blue sky, finally, though I still wouldn’t call it sunny.

We came back for lunch and rested a bit before heading back out. I had the club sandwich for lunch which was excellent. Rob was less excited by his burger. For the afternoon dive, we did a muck dive about 5 minutes to the right of the resort, at a site called Vivire. It was once again quite productive. Joemar told us that we would likely see the cousin of Shaun the sheep that was green and blue, and oh buy did we see those. Rob spent so much time photographing them. Some of them were big enough to really look at with my eyes, which was nice. The one really good find on this dive was an octopus with a single blue ring (can’t remember what it’s called). We also saw an armina looking slug that was biggish and lots of small nudis that I couldn’t identify with my eyes.

We got back a little before 5 and decided to hang out by the pool until the night dive. Then we headed out just to the point where we tried to dive yesterday (Mainit). We got in just before dark. The reef sloped down to around 60 feet and had patches of reef. It looked like it would be a nice site to dive during the day too. We saw lots of good critters on the dive… plenty of nudis, a huge harlequin shrimp, a squid, a frogfish, lots of cool crabs and shrimps, and the reef was seemingly covered with these huge and very creepy basket stars.

We got back and headed down to dinner a little before 8. Actually we hit the bar first, where I got a mango daiquiri (yum).

Anilao 2024: Day 1

We got to the hotel around 9am, so we got checked in and did the 11am dive. There were three other divers on our boat (an Italian family) who had just done there checkout dive in the morning. We attempted to go dive just at the point to the left of the hotel, but visibility was apparently not good enough so we went back past the hotel just a couple minutes away and dove a site that was called Twin Rocks, I think. The site was a slope with patchy coral, we were around 50 to 60 feet for most of the dive, but came up shallower on the return.

Our guide found tons of critters, so even though there were some spots with nice little walls or coral heads, we pretty much had our heads buried looking for macro stuff. We saw a bunch of nudibranchs of varying sizes, I think I only found boring dorids, but our guide did a better job. There were also some cool tiny shrimp and crabs. I found several small morays, including one that was free swimming, and there was a yellow ribbon eel! My best find of the dive was a stonefish. Rob was not as impressed as I was (probably because the fish was facing the wrong direction to really get a good pic) but I insisted he take a pic for documentation purposes. We also saw a dancing sweetlips. When we surfaced, conditions had gotten super snotty and wind waves were breaking over our heads as we got out of our gear next to the boat. That was kind of unexpected to me, since it was really flat when we got in.

We went back to the resort and had lunch. Rob had sisig of course and I had some veggie noodles. We went back to our room to rest for a while, and during that time, the weather really deteriorated. It started to rain and was crazy windy. The rain stopped by the time for our next dive, but it was still quite windy. Getting on the boat was interesting.

We headed across the channel to do a dive called Apol Reef, but it turned out to be too much current there, so we went to a muck dive site nearby. This was probably my preference anyway. This dive was great. We saw tons of Shaun the sheep nudis, which Rob is obsessed with, two little frogfish (one orange and one black), some pipefish, a seahorse, a non-flamboyant cuttlefish, and tons of nudis. Some very small aeolids. Woot. I found a neat little fish with a long dangly lure thing sticking out of its head. I think that was my best find of the dive, only because Joemar did all of the good finding on the dive. One notable thing about this dive was that it seemed to be at the junction of two masses of water, one that was definitely colder than the other. You could see a shimmering layer where the two met in a couple of places, but mostly you could just feel it.

We decided to pass on the evening dive, since I was kind of tired. After a bit of relaxing, we went to the bar and had mango coladas. Yummm. Then we headed to dinner, where we had chicken adobo, grilled liempo (pork belly) and veggie chop suey.