Dive...Dive...Dive....

March 3, 2009 – We can’t believe we are nearing the end of our eastern hemisphere travels, but here we are, the second to last stop….The Philippines!, in which we have three weeks to explore a land with over 7000 islands!!!!
Our first night is spent at the only hotel in the Manila airport, the famous 1 star Manila Airport Hotel. We arrived at 6PM and are done and gone at 6 AM the next morning heading out to the Island of Cebu. Once we landed in Cebu (a one hour plane ride) we hired a driver to take us three hours to the most northern Part of Cebu Island, the town of Maya. In Maya, we hired a small pump boat to take us out to the remote island of Malapsacua.

While bargaining for our boat, we were fortunate to hook up with a fellow from San Diego, Jeff AKA "Lucky" (more on that later). Jeff ended up being a fabulous travelling companion and stayed with us for a few days of adventure. We all had the same itinerary. Dive and Enjoy and not waste too much time on the road (or in this instance in the water) We all wanted to go to Malapascua which is known as the only feeding station in the world for the famous Thresher Shark and we were all intent on this miraculous creature of the deep.

We arrived in Malpascua in time for happy hour, in which we all began drinking and getting happy. It was interesting watching the Philippine’s come on to Jeff. Since he was travelling solo, he was fair bait for the come on’s and it seems that culturally, getting a western guy is a good catch for the Philippine’s. In any event, we had an entertaining evening and went diving the next day. The reef was nice enough…we saw some specialties, but it was the next day that we were excited for.

We woke up at 5:00 AM so that we could be out on the boat at 5:15 and at the dive site in time to see the sharks feeding frenzy. On day number 1 we got to see one thresher about 50 feet away. We were very pleased with this and felt very fortunate for the experience. The rest of the day was one of sheer relaxation. Malapascua as I mentioned is a very small island. Electricity for the island comes from a generator and if you are lucky you can get a wireless Internet connection or even air con.


The reef was non-existent because of all of the damage brought on by past fishing with dynamite, so we took advantage of the most lazy day of our vacation, by reading, relaxing and just hanging out. That evening we went on a specialty dive that was so interesting. It was Jeff and us, and our dive master who were going to explore the Mandarin fish. The Mandarin has an interesting mating pattern which we were allowed to watch. The male, a 3 inch black fish with electric red, purple and yellow, would hook up side by side with a 1 inch female. The two would flitter up, the male would ejaculate (and this we would see) the two would separate, and the male would go back down for another female. I bet he kept busy all night long. There were a lot of females waiting in line.

The next day we repeated the ritual of going out to see the threshers. Michelle insisted we were here to see threshers and we were going to see threshers. She coined the phrase “this is a once in a life time opportunity” (but more about that phrase later too!)

Jeff did not join us on this dive, hence the beginning of his nickname “Lucky”. Ok, waking up at 5:00 AM and diving into the Sulu Sea is not our idea, maybe my idea, of having a nice fun vacation…. So there we go. We motor out about a couple of miles (1 hour by long boat), and do our 2nd dive to see the threshers. As we start our descend to our sea floor at 20 meters (60 ft.) we glance up and see a large manta ray gliding across above us eating today's breakfast. It was a 3 meters (9ft.) wide and maybe twice as long. It was a graceful moment, and at that point we could of called it a day. But oh no….. we are the 2nd group of divers setting up to see the shark, and as we get to the staging area, a 10ft. long 3 ft wide thresher appears. It starts swimming right around all of us ( total of 10 divers) at one point it swims away, only to be coming up behind us, where I am. I glance around and see it, my heart jumps, in my head I’m thinking “Why am I here?, What do I think I’m doing? Help!!!!!”.

As he heads for me, he makes a sharp left turn and swims away. The other divers are all looking at each other not believing what just happen. I’m ready to bail, I give the heart pound signal to Michelle, she’s all excited floating 2 feet off of the sea floor. I’m looking all over for our next visit. Everyone is still looking forward, but me, I’m doing a 360 degree look, and son of a gun, now there are 2 sharks and they start coming up behind us, and I’m still in the back of the group first to see them. I want to lie down and not breath, I want to become coral, and then the fish wouldn’t see me, but no, they come up on both sides, I’m in the middle, then they take another turn away. What’s going on, why they are doing this.

The dive master is in shock, everyone is looking at each other with amazement, and there’s Michelle, floating up acting like the sharks next meal. At this point the dive group says OK, enough, time to surface. Everyone is smiling, giving high 5’s, and I’m thinking if I’ll ever do something like this again. I reviewed my life, I remembered things like family, when I was young, on the beach where I should be, it’s incredible what goes through your mind when a significant emotional event like that happens.

We get top side and the dive master says, It’s his best dive ever…”. Since this happened, I have had thoughts, daydreams re-living the experience. I have a feeling, I’ll never forget it. We get back to shore and meet up with “Lucky” (Jeff) and we tell him what he missed. Not the best thing to do when you travel all this way, and miss a dive like that.

He was very disappointed, and I guess, I was not thinking, when I told him it was the dive master's best dive ever, he almost started to cry. He vowed never to skip another dive if he has the choice. After breakfast we pack up and take off for our next destination, we’re not sure where that will be, but I know it’ll have to top this.