Philippines 2012: Day 2: Two dives with Tech Asia

On Wednesday morning, the boat from Tech Asia picked us (and more importantly our gear) up from the resort.  It was just a couple minutes ride over there, but I guess they thought this was the easiest way to move the gear.  We walked up to the shop, and met our guide, Ferg.  He told us we would be diving with another GUE diver, Steve, who showed up shortly after us.  It turns out (though we didn’t realize this until later) we had met Steve in Florida before.  Steve has done all of the dives in the area before many many times, so it was basically like having two guides.  We ended up doing a dive in the morning and a dive in the afternoon.

For the morning dive, we went to a site called Deep Monkey Wreck, which has a series of walls in the 18/45 range.  And then we would work our way up the reef (if the currents behaved) and deco all the way up the reef.  Woohoo.  After a briefing with a chalkboard and everything, we loaded up our gear (well actually WE didn’t load anything) and got going.  The boat we were on was a smaller version of one of those outrigger boats.  It was a nice spacious ride, but rolling off of the side was a bit nerve-wracking, at least the first time, for two reasons.  First, it is pretty high off of the water.  Second, there are those outriggers, which I was afraid of hitting on the way down (yes, I know that's ridiculous).  Actually there was a third thing too.  We were diving with scooters (Gavins, barf), and the usual protocol is to sit the scooter on the rail next to you, clip it to you, and then roll in with your hand on the strap.  I noted that I had never rolled into the water with my scooter before, and was given the option to have it handed down instead.  While mulling that over, I asked what would happen if I somehow screwed up the roll-in-with-scooter maneuver.  I was assured that the worst that would happen would the scooter would land on my head, so I decided to go for it.  In all, over the course of the trip, I rolled in off of that boat 4 times with a scooter.  I think the scooter landed on me at least twice, but much more impressively, on at least two of the dives, I did a complete 360 underwater before popping back to the surface.

Anyhoo, back to the dive.  The dive ended up being a little shallower than I expected;  I don’t know if we dropped in a different spot, or just didn’t cover as much ground as expected.  My scooter turned out to be a bit mis-weighted, so that when it was running, the handle was about 30 degrees off from where I would like it.  So that took a little getting used to.  We were initially over a slopey area, and then ended up on a wall, though it wasn’t a very tall wall (by local standards anyway).  The thing I found noteworthy about the site was that it was covered with sea whips (I think that’s what they are called… the things that stick out and look like fat pipe cleaners).   I was terrified of a sea whip versus scooter incident, so I was giving them quite a bit of space :P  Those were there on the slope and on top of the wall.  Once we got to the wall, there were also some really big sea fans along the side of the wall.  Eventually we turned around and headed back the way that we came.  Rob kept making me pose behind sea fans, which was tricky with the current.  I would scooter way up current and then get in position and drift along and hope he could get a shot or two before scootering back up-current and doing it all over again.  As promised, we deco’d up the reef.  And I got to enjoy crinoids in every freakin’ color of the rainbow.  I love crinoids!

After lunch at El Galleon resort, which is like a 2 minute walk from the dive shop, we met up again in the afternoon, and went back out for another dive in the same depth range.  This site was called Sweet Lips Corner, and featured a neat swimthrough with lots of sweetlips congregating at the exit.  We dropped in fairly shallow water, and then scootered down a long gradual slope, and eventually hit a dropoff.  After following along this dropoff for a bit, we found the swimthrough which went into the wall, then there was a sharp turn to the right, and it came out on the other side of a bend along the wall.  I swam into it first, and once I got to the area where it turned, I looked out and saw a bunch of fish congregating at the exit.  I figured if I swam out, it would disturb them, so I turned around and went back out, and told Rob to go through first.  He swam in and was in there forever and ever and didn’t end up taking pictures of the fish.  Not sure why.  Eventually I went back through and posed for pictures at the exit.  By this point the fish had mostly scattered, so they aren’t really evident in the picture.  Once we headed up the slope to start our deco, we found ourselves in a howling current.  It was crazy.  Until we got up to about 20 or 30 feet, we were just flying over the reef, which was fairly barren.  I entertained myself by videoing us being dragged along.  When we got to 30 feet, some patches of reef appeared, and then it was denser at 20 feet.  The current also died down, so we could actually swim around looking at critters.

We made plans to meet again in the morning for some more diving, and we walked back to Atlantis (which was an 8 to 10 minute walk along the water).

Philippines 2012: Day 1: Local diving with Atlantis

We met up a little early since we had to setup our gear in the morning.  We had both forgotten to bring our STAs, but since all of the DMs dive with backplates and wings, we were told on arrival that they could hook us up with STAs (phew).  So we had to scavenge from the DM gear to find ones that would work for us, and figure out how to rig weights and stuff.  I ended up just using a small weight belt, after a couple of sketchy attempts to mount weights on the cam bands (my STA has weight pockets).  Once that was taken care of, they loaded our gear onto the boat, and we headed for one of the “far away” local sites (a 12 minute boat ride), called Coral Cove.  This site is around the eastern point of the island, then southwest from that point.  It was crazy flat when we got to the site.  Rob asked the crew if it was always this calm.  They laughed and said no.

We were diving with Norm, and it was to be a 70 foot max depth dive.  The site slopes down gently from about 20 feet to > 70 feet (we didn’t quite stick to the 70 foot max depth, but I don’t think we got much past 80).  Rob was shooting macro, so we were looking for critters.  We saw a few different kinds of nudibranchs, one Pygmy seahorse, two frogfish, and a (black) ribbon eel.  Plus lots of cute little fishies and crustaceans.  One cool thing that Norm pointed out was an electric clam.  I did not even know that such a creature existed!  It was really cool to watch it “arc”.  The second frogfish that Norm found was multi-colored, with an interesting pattern on it.  Unfortunately, Norm found it after Rob had already thumbed the dive.  We had worked our way up the slope by this point, so I asked Rob if he really didn’t have the gas for some pictures, and sadly he did not.  There was a decent amount of current on this site, and we were at some points swimming against the current (I think because Norm wanted to find the pygmy seahorse for us).  It was a bit of work :)

The second dive was at West Escarceo, which is closer; it is not quite to the point to the east.  We joined another boat with some chaps from the UK for the rest of the day.  This was another site that was reefy on a slope.  This dive was with Cris, who was good at pointing out little critters.  After lunch, we went back to basically one site over, to a site called “Wreck Point” with Thax.  Our nudi-finding skills improved with each dive, so we saw more of the ones we’d seen before plus some new guys. 

There was a dusk dive to look for mandarin fish, so we initially thought we wouldn’t have time for the second afternoon dive, but Rob didn’t comprehend this concept, and talked them into taking us for a quick dive just out from of the resort.  Like a one minute boat ride.  We were joined by another diver who had just received his delayed gear, so this was his first dive of the trip.  This site was pretty much sand with little patches of reef, which had plenty of neat critters.  All in all, across the day dives, in addition to the nudibranchs, the other critters that I liked the best were the orangutan crabs (which are SO cute).  And that electric clam was really awesome.

The mandarin fish dive was similarly close to the resort.  The plan was to spend 20 or so minutes in the rubble area with the mandarinfish and then swim off for a night dive.  We were told that the fishies wouldn’t like white lights, so a couple people had red lights to use instead.  We were briefed to drop down around this rubble area and form a circle, and kneel on the sand and wait for the fishies to come out.  I’m not exactly a fan of kneeling on the sand (not so much for philosophical reason but because it just isn't comfortable in my opinion), but hovering in a circle, when there is current, is a bit of a pain.  Rob found the perfect spot in the circle so he was just swimming a little bit into the current.  And left me to get swirled around in the current :P  At first I was getting pretty bored because I would just occasionally get a glimpse of one or two of the fish, and I could barely make them out.  I guess my eyes eventually adjusted, because eventually I was able to see them really clearly and I could pick out pairs of them all over the place!  So then it got fun.  We ended up spending about 45 minutes with the mandarinfish, and then swam around a bit to look for other critters.  The memorable critters that we saw were a white cuttlefish (my first ever, not a flamboyant though) and a really cool (maybe a little creepy-looking) flatfish.

Somewhere during the course of the day, I managed to destroy yet another E/O cord on my light.  I hate E/O cords. 

Philippines 2012: Dive Operations

We did a total of 6 days of diving, with 4 days with the dive op at Atlantis, and 2 days of tech diving through Tech Asia.  Both dive operations were great, and I would recommend them both.  And since they support different kinds of diving, I don’t have to pick one to recommend over the other :)






Atlantis

The dive operation at Atlantis is extremely efficient.  They run 5 boat dives a day, which leave at 9, 11, 2, 4, and 6.  The local dive sites are all less than 15 minutes away, with quite a few within 5 minutes.   This is how they can manage to do five single-tank trips a day.  They have a fleet of small, fast open boats, which are fun to ride around in, which we did all of the local diving from.  They also have a couple of larger boats, one of which we went on when we did a day trip to Verde Island.

On the day that we arrived, we got a little briefing about the dive facilities, which, in terms of stuff we would use, included a gear storage room, a camera room, and a rinsing station.  The gear storage room was not icky, as I often find gear storage rooms to be in the tropics.  I was not afraid to walk around in there in bare feet.  The camera room was convenient since we could leave our lights and Rob’s camera to charge in there without having to schlep them up to the room.

The first morning of diving, we met up with our DM for the first dive, and he showed us the protocols for diving.  We setup our gear that first morning, and then once they knew how our gear was to be setup, we didn’t have to touch it again for the rest of the trip.  Before each dive (or before a set of dives, in some cases), we would analyze our tanks and label them with our names, and they would magically get transported to the boat, and our gear placed on them before each dive.  We need to get some of that action on the Escapade!


The boat schedule was constantly in flux, since people would change their plans throughout the day.  They managed all of this on a big whiteboard, which showed you which boat had which divers and which DM for the rest of the day (and the next morning, once it was late in the afternoon).  Sometimes they would also include the site names or whether it would be a macro or wide-angle dive (or at least they did this for our boat, since it had some photographers on it).

Our orientation finished with our first dive, which was just us and the DM.  I guess they wanted to make sure we weren’t total screw-ups.  The boat protocol was to shimmy into our gear on the gunwale, and then flop backward on the count of 3.  At the end of the dive, we removed our gear in the water, passed it up to the boat tender, and then climbed a little ladder to get back into the boat.  Or you can just pull yourself up over the side, but I lacked the ability to do that gracefully.

All of the DMs we dove with were excellent at pointing out critters and otherwise letting us do our own thing.  We dove mostly with Cris (who is a critter-spotting pro) and Rusty (who is a nudi-geek), plus a couple of dives with Thax and Norm.


Tech Asia

We spent two days doing some tech dives with Tech Asia.  When we initially booked the trip, I had no particular plans to do anything but the diving with the resort.  At some point someone (Ginny probably) mentioned to Rob that tech diving was popular there, and I told him I was happy to tech dive, but he had to set it up.  So he went the easy route and looked on the GUE instructor list, found that there is a GUE instructor (Anders Kristensen) in Puerto Galera, and contacted him.  He was not in town while we were, but he pointed us to the shop that he is affiliated with -- Tech Asia.

Tech Asia was a very easy shop to do tech diving out of.  We told them the depth range we were willing to dive, and that we were happy to do whatever was good in that range, and they picked some dives sites.  Our guide, Ferg, was GUE Tech 2 trained, and seemed to know all of the dive sites like the back of his hand.  In order to minimize the amount of gear we had to pack (which was already a lot), we left our doubles wings and a couple of stage regs at home, and rented them from the shop.  The gear rental was very cheap, and everything was configured as one would expect (I suppose this is a benefit of standardization :P).  When you are doing recreational diving in a vacation destination, you sort of expect not to have to schlep your gear around, but I wouldn’t expect this for tech diving.  But the guys at Tech Asia took care of all of that for us.  The only gear I ever had to move to or from the boat was my fins and sometimes my light (depending on if it made it onto my rig before it was whisked away).  But the boat crew do a lot more than just schlep gear and drive the boat.  On one dive, I was getting geared up, and June (one of the boat crew/fill guys/gear schleppers) told me that my long hose and necklace were tangled.  It was like being on the Escapade!

The boat that we dove from was the same style (but a bit smaller) as the “ferry” that we took from Batangas… the kind with the outriggers.  But the protocol was pretty much the same diving from this boat as from the Atlantis boats… get geared up on the gunwale, roll into the water, then at the end of the dive, pass up bottles, get out of gear, pass up your rig, then climb a ladder to get back into the boat.  I was a bit afraid of hitting my head on the outriggers when I rolled in, though I am pretty sure that would require a backward leap which I am not actually capable of (especially not with doubles and multiple bottles on).

The cost of Helium in remote places is usually quite high, but I didn’t think it was prohibitively expensive.  The gas was certainly more expensive than it is at home, but at the end of the day, the cost per dive there was comparable with the cost per tech dive off of a boat at home.  Of course, the difference in price between tech diving and rec diving in the Philippines is huge, and I probably would have had just as much fun doing rec diving all week (but Rob liked the variety that the tech diving offered).  It is certainly the case that we saw stuff on the tech dives that we wouldn’t have otherwise seen.  But if we spent those two extra days diving with the guys at Atlantis, we probably would have seen stuff we didn’t otherwise see.  There’s just a lot to see, at whatever depth!

Aside from the diving itself, Tech Asia is just a very well-outfitted shop.  I destroyed the cord on my can light on the first day (surprise surprise), and Dave replaced the cord while we were there.  In addition to renting all of the usual gear, they also rent scooters.  And they are very efficient at filling trimix, both in terms of not dumping gas and also in terms of speed (they filled 4 sets of tanks over lunch so that we could do a dive in the morning and one in the afternoon).  Another bonus about diving with Tech Asia and staying at Atlantis was that we met tons of kittens on the walk between the two each day.  Here's the best picture I could get.  This is the biggest of the kittens that I met (next to a stroller, to give you a sense of scale).

Philippines 2012: Atlantis Resort

We stayed at Atlantis Puerto Galera, and to cut to the chase, I would certainly recommend it and would return there.  We decided to go there based on the recommendation of a few different people.  Anywater Sports regularly runs trips there, and I had heard rave reviews about it from many people who had gone on their trips in the past.  They reported that you could basically spend all of your time diving (important to Rob) and that there are tons of cool little critters (important to me).  We considered joining an AWS trip there, but the dates didn’t work, so we decided to just go on our own instead.  The resort is pretty well-described on its website, so I will just add a few of my thoughts.  The only thing that was a bit of a surprise to me is that the resort is small, in the sense that I thought it would be more spread out.  This is not a negative comment, just a comment.  All of the room buildings are built into a hill, and in the center of the hill, there are short staircases zig-zagging up to all of the different levels… it sort of reminded me of Lombard street :)

I’ll discuss the resort’s dive operation in a later post.

Our Room

We reserved whatever the most basic room was, and we stayed in room #1.  It was not too far up the hill, which was good (especially since I was hobbling for the first couple of days).  I think we had to walk up about 12 or 15 steps, spread out over three staircases, to get to our room.  Outside of our room was a terrace overlooking the levels below ours (which in our case meant we were basically overlooking the spa and the pool area).  There was a table out there, which was a convenient place to compute when I woke up early and Rob was still asleep in the room.

Inside of the room, there was a queen bed and a twin bed.  It was the spitting image of the picture of the “twin deluxe” room on the resort’s site.  In fact, the picture could quite possibly have been taken in our room.  There was a TV with a good assortment of TV channels, plus it was modern enough that if we had thought to bring the cord thingy-ma-bob for the laptop/iPad, we could have watched movies on it. Ted always says that the most important properties of a hotel in the tropics is AC and wifi (I would argue these are the most important after being clean and bug-free).  The room met all of these criteria.  The AC was quite adequate, often a little too adequate for me!  They have wifi throughout the resort, which was slightly less awesome in our room than elsewhere.  It was adequate for reading email, but not great for surfing any websites with a lot of pictures.  Overall I found the room and terrace to be very comfortable.

Food and Beverage

Meals at the restaurant were included in our rate (which I didn’t consider not doing, because I didn’t realize that there were tons of other places to eat within a few minute walk).  The food was quite tasty, and the options were quite varied, the menu was “international”.  There was also plenty of food (ridiculously much food), which is sometimes a complaint of Rob’s.  For breakfast, they have a menu (which doesn’t change day-to-day) with standard breakfast fare plus a few interesting local dishes.  Nearly all of the breakfast dishes were served with a fruit plate and a breadbasket.  The breadbasket consists of freshly braked breads and a muffin, which were all really tasty.  All of the baked goods at the restaurant were super tasty.  I also highly recommend the mango juice with breakfast.  Mmm.  For lunch and dinner, there are blackboards where they write the chef’s recommendations for the day (consisting of a soup, several entrees, and a dessert), or you can order off of the menu.  They also have a Mongolian grill most nights, which we had a couple of nights.  We had something from the chef’s recommendations most of the time, but ordered off of the menu a few times too.  I had grilled fish a few times, pasta a few times, a curry dish, etc. 

--> In addition to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, they also bring snacks over from the restaurant between the two morning dives and the two afternoon dives.

The staff at the restaurant were all very friendly and provided excellent service.  My only complaint was that there was quite a bit of variation in how long a meal took, which meant that sometimes we were in a rush to get to the after-lunch dive.

There was a bar in the restaurant and also one beachfront, by the dive operation.  They make a tasty pina colada.  The drink prices were really reasonable for a resort – in fact, they were cheaper than drinks at restaurants that we typically go to at home. 

Spa

The resort has a spa, which is in a pretty little building adjacent to the pool.  Spa treatments are cheap (by US standards), with an hour treatment running $25-30, though I am sure similar treatments could be had outside of the resort for quite a bit less.  But I stuck with the resort for convenience and quality control.  I had two spa treatments.  The first was the sea salt scrub and oatmeal wrap; I liked the scrub, but the oatmeal was a bit sticky for my taste.  Also, this treatment was performed in a room, not the spa building, which detracted from the ambience.  The second was an hour-long massage on the last day, which was awesome.  If I had been able to find more time in my busy dive schedule, I would have spent more time at the spa, but we must prioritize :)

Pool, etc.

There is also a pool, which we only used once, but was very nice.  Again, I would have spent more time there, but my days were filled with diving.  The pool doesn’t “open” until 8, which is unfortunate, since I would have liked to swim early in the morning before I adjusted to the time.  I understand why they do this though, since there are a couple of rooms right next to the pool.  There is also a sun deck on top of the spa building, which I liked in principle, but never actually used it. 

Philippines 2012: Getting There

Getting there was an adventure in itself, even though it is not particularly difficult to get from SFO to Manila.  Though there are a variety of more efficient ways to get from SFO to Manila, we flew Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong, spent the night there, and then flew to Manila in the morning.  You can fly directly to Manila, but we booked the flight with miles, and flying through HK seemed like the best option on a Oneworld airline.  Plus neither of us had ever been to Hong Kong before, so we didn’t mind spending a night there.  We flew first class on the way there, which was delightful.  Rob said he thought I was more excited about the flight than the trip itself.  Even though our route was not particularly efficient, and I am sure we somehow lost a day out of it, I liked it, because we left home in the early afternoon (meaning we didn’t have to wake up early, and we also didn’t end up packing until the last moment like we would if we left in the evening), and we got to Manila in the middle of the day, leaving plenty of time to get to the resort and recover before our first day of diving.

So, we packed everything (well not quite everything… more on that later) on Friday afternoon and then had a leisurely morning on Saturday, even having time to get breakfast before meeting our cab.  We got to the airport at the recommended two hours prior to departure (which I have never understood, but I am a rule-follower), and checked in and got through security without any light or camera-related hiccups.  The woman at security impressively identified our canister light heads as being dive gear before I said anything to her.  We missed the turn to get to the lounge (which I swear was not marked) and made it all the way past our gate before we found a map and figured out we had to go all the way back to security.  Most of the lounges in the terminal are in a sort of far off area.  We went to the CX lounge, which was nice and shiny (I think it is less than a year old).  We spent about 15 minutes figuring out how to print out our itinerary (which at checkin they warned we should carry when we entered the Philippines), since the staff at the lounge couldn’t actually print it out for us (which I found to be rather lame), and then we wiled away the time eating wonton soup and pork buns (the baked kind, not the steamed kind), until our slightly delayed flight was ready to board.

The boarding lounge was a zoo, and we had to wait in a pretty long line since I guess half the world has status on CX.  But once we got to the plane, we were whisked away to a magical quite place away from the hoi polloi.  After stowing our bags, I invited myself into Rob’s cubicle and we drank champagne while we waited to takeoff, which seemed like a surprisingly long time.  But we finally took off, and shortly after that, dinner service began.  I once again took my place in Rob’s visitor seat so we could eat together.  The meal started with caviar and smoked salmon and more champagne (though at some point Rob switched to scotch, because he is like that), yum yum yum,  And then a crab salad that was a bit overly dressed but had nuts and dried fruit, which are, in my opinion, the only reason to ever eat a salad.  We both had the beef tenderloin, which I thought was super yummy and cooked perfectly.  Rob’s was apparently cooked a bit more than mine, but upon discovery of this, I gave him most of what was left of mine (there was no way I could eat it all after all of the other food), and he agreed that it was very good.  For dessert, we had bread pudding and we also took a little bit of cheese from the cheese plate.  Then we had coffee and pralines.  Unfortunately since Rob is allergic to hazelnuts, I was forced to eat most of his for him.

Eventually I left Rob alone and changed into my pajamas (which Rob found very amusing) and returned to my seat, which had been transformed into a bed.  I knew that in the interest of adjusting to the time change that I should get a significant amount of sleep, but it just didn’t happen.  I think I ended up getting about 3 hours of sleep.  I watched Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which was a movie I thought sounded interesting when it came out, but I had never gotten around to watching.  So, all I can say is that I watched the entire movie from start to finish, and I have absolutely no idea what was going on.  I think maybe I need to watch it again on a bigger screen, where it is easier to keep all of the old white men straight.  Aside from this, I alternated between trying to sleep and reading (Devil in the White City, pretty interesting book).  When I eventually did get to sleep, I slept very well, as the seat/bed was really comfortable.  When I woke up, they were preparing for the pre-arrival meal service.  I think this time I convinced Rob to come and visit me, so I could have the comfy seat.  I had the lobster ravioli, which was good except it came with a big scary pile of spinach on top (blech); Rob had roasted chicken.  For dessert, I had some sort of pear, almond cake with a giant dollop of whipped cream on top, and Rob had ice cream.  When we were finished, we were pretty close to landing… and I couldn’t believe I’d been on the plane for 14 hours!

The landing into Hong Kong was very scenic, plus there were zillions of boats that you could see off the coast, which was cool.  Once landed, we got through immigration and customs very quickly, and after a brief wander and a consultation with the tourist information desk, we found the way to our hotel (the Regal Airport Hotel), which is connected to the terminal by a walkway.  It was very convenient, which is why we decided to stay there.  After getting our room and showering and changing, we decided to head into the city to the night market.  After getting some not very helpful (basically false) information from a bell hop, we got the correct directions for how to get there on the train and subway.  It took us about an hour door to door, and was quite straightforward.  The best thing about the subway was the interface for buying a ticket.  You touch the station that you want to go to, pick how many passengers there are, and voila!  (Basically the opposite of the Deutsche Bahn ticket machines, which recently left me traumatized and fearful of all train ticket machines!).  

Once we found our way there, we wandered around for a while, looking at various counterfeit leather and electronic products, and some mahjongg sets, and then we found some food, including some super tasty chow fun.  Mmm.  Then we headed back toward the subway, and met a friendly kitty along the way.  He was in very good shape, and didn’t seem like a stray; it turned out he belonged to one of the shopkeepers.  We took the train back to our hotel, and I promptly fell asleep.

I woke up really early and eventually so did Rob, so we headed to the airport and killed time at the CX lounge.  We considered lounge-hopping, but once we got to the Wing, we got lazy and just hung out there.  We had some tasty Chinese food at the noodle bar, including roast pork buns (which I love!) that came in cute little single-bun bamboo steamers.  We also shared some noodles and other various dumplings, which were all quite tasty.  They also had a variety of continental breakfast offerings, but I don’t know why anyone would eat those when they could go to the noodle bar instead :) 

Eventually it was about time for our flight so we wandered over to our gate, where things were a bit behind.  They finally lined us up and we were among the first to board.  We were in non-adjacent seats, not even close to adjacent – there was basically a wall between our seats.  I tried to get us adjacent seats online, but it showed no other seats available.  But there was only one other person in the first class cabin.  When I arrived in my cubicle and looked over the wall and said to Rob that we were so far apart, once of the flight attendants promptly re-seated me right behind Rob.  We had some pre-departure mimosas in Rob’s cubicle, and then I took my seat.  Shortly after takeoff, they started breakfast service.  We had fruit, and then we both opted for the dim sum option, but I also got some yogurt, which was very tasty and came in a very cute little jar – I’ve never had yogurt in a jar before.  It was quite turbulent, and the seatbelt sign came on shortly after breakfast service started.  Their policy is to not serve hot beverages when the seatbelt sign is on, which I totally understand (and they were super apologetic about it), but it made me wish they had brought the coffee before the juice :)  Once breakfast was over, I snuck back to my seat and before you know it, we started our descent.  We started our very bumpy descent and then it sort of stalled out and we did a huge loop past Manila and then back around and finally landed.  We were just a hair late.

We cleared immigration very quickly, waited a few minutes for our bags, and then walked through customs, and chatted with a very friendly customs agent.  The resort had sent some very thorough instructions on where to go to get to the hotel lounge, complete with step-by-step pictures.  But somehow I immediately lost the scent, so I asked at the tourist information desk, and they pointed us in the right direction.  When we got to the lounge, we sat down and about 2 minutes later, someone arrived to retrieve us and walk us to a van, where we were handed cold bottles of water (ahhh).  The van ride took just under 2 hours, about half of it on the highway and half of it on smaller roads.  Eventually we got to the point where we would meet the boat, the “port” I suppose.  Our boat pulled up, and it was of a style that I had seen only in maritime museums before.  It had outriggers, and while I didn’t know the term for this sort of boat at the time, a bit of googling suggests it is called a bangka.  The ride over to Puerto Galera was pretty sporty.  It wasn’t scary rough or anything, but there were whitecaps everywhere plus some breaking wind waves, and it was just very slow going at first.  I was thinking that the average tourist might get sick in such seas.  It turns out this was not typical, but was considered rough.  It took about an hour and a half, which is quite a bit longer than typical.  When we finally arrived to Sabang beach, we pulled up to the “port” and we walked down a scary little plank to get off of the boat.  As I got to the end of the plank, I stepped off of it, and stepped right into a hole in the dock, and twisted my ankle.  Ouch.  I tried to suck it up and walk it off, which was pretty painful.  We were met by one of the DMs from the resort and a couple other guys to haul our bags to the resort, which was a couple of minutes walk (hobble) along the beach. 

When we arrived, they sat us down at a table by the desk, gave us some limeade (or some local drink that approximated limeade) and briefed us on the resort.  We made plans to do the dive briefing/paperwork an hour later, and were finally excused to our room, and someone brought our bags up a minute later.  And that concludes this portion of the story…