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.
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.
