Last day in the Philippines

We are in Manilla now.  We were lucky enough to get a ride with a fellow diver back to Manilla so we didn't have to ride the crowded bus.  He had a nice big vehicle, which was good since we filled it with our 5 suitcases!  It was a much more comfortable and shorter trip with him.  He was so kind to also take us out to dinner.  He told us there was a great seafood restaurant nearby our hotel and decided we should all go there together.  It's a good thing we went with him because Ryan and I would have been lost without him.  You go to the seafood market and pick out the fish, lobster, crab, etc that you want to have for dinner.  You pay for it there and then you bring it across the street to the restaurant and tell them how you want them to prepare it.  The seafood was very inexpensive.  It was insane how much they had though.  There was booth after booth of people trying to sell us everything you could think of (many of the things we have seen and taken pictures of over the last 2 weeks!). 

Our Mandarin Dive

So we did another "night" dive.  It was called a mandarin dive because it was a little earlier than a night dive and we originally went out looking specifically for a little tiny fish called a mandarin.  It apparently is only found here and in one other location in the world.  There were three that our dive master found hiding in the rubble in front of our dive shop.  They were not easy to spot and liked to stay out of sight.  He had a little flashlight with a red film over it so that he could find the fish but not make it run and hide (like a regular light would make the fish do).  They are very colorful fish, but are only about 1-2 inches big!  I randomly started shooting as many pictures as I could to hopefully get one that worked.  Ryan's camera wasn't able to focus on them in the dark, so he just watched.  While the dive master and I were completely focused on the mandarin, a LARGE boat that was anchored in the bay was trying to get out.  It's anchor was stuck, so they were trying to put the boat in reverse and get the anchor loose.  Well, Ryan watched as they pulled this anchor, along with a LARGE coral head all the way across the bottom, not more than 10 yards from us.  Finally he got the dive master's attention and he swam to the surface to talk to the boat's driver.  We found out later from the people that were in the dive shop that they tied up about 7 boats and drove them all in reverse trying to get this anchor loose.  Good thing it didn't come loose and go flying into us, the inattentive divers below!  :)

Well, we had a great last day of diving today.  We will post pictures and write more tomorrow morning before we leave the island and go back to Manilla.  Tonight, they are grilling for us at the dive shop, so we have to get going.

Our Mandarin Dive

Our first night dive here

We did two dives and a night dive yesterday.  They were very eventful.  We finally got to see the famous mimic octopus.  It wasn't quite what Ryan expected since he didn't realize until we came up from the dive that we had finally seen the mimic octopus (pictured above) that we had been looking for since we got here.  We also saw the ornate ghost pipefish (black spiky thing above).  This had eluded us for the two weeks we've been diving as well.

Since we had the afternoon off before our night dive at 6:30, we went into town and got one hour massages for $10 each!  Ryan has been looking forward to this since he started reading about the Philippines last fall.  It just proves his ultimate cheapness!  He was more excited about the fact that it was $10 each than he was about getting an hour massage!  :)

The last two pictures are from our night dive.  There were two squid that were being playful.  The other thing is a stargazer and it buries itself in the sand.  All you can see are its eyes and mouth.  Our dive master found this and got it to come out of the sand so we could see it.  It is quite an ugly creature!

We had trouble with the internet connection today.  We will post again tomorrow morning and tell you about today's dives (it is 5:30 pm here right now). 

Above Water

We didn't do any diving today, we just toured the island on motor bike.  We had these great red scooter helmets!  Ryan enjoyed driving the motorbike.  I was a lot more nervous about hitting other vehicles and bikes and people.  They don't exactly stay on their side of the road, especially when you are traveling on winding roads going up and down through the mountains!  We got to see a waterfall and go sit out on White Beach.  It was lots of fun. 

I also posted some pictures of our hotel and our great room and view.  It has been so enjoyable to sit out on our balcony and just take in the sights and sounds overlooking the water.  Unfortunately that's all for this morning...gotta finish helping Ryan get ready to dive for the day!

Above Water

Another day of diving (Sorry...just not very creative)

 Purplish octopus

 A few seconds later, a spotted coral looking octopus.

 Coral looking cuttlefish...you swim right past these thinking they're rocks on the bottom.

 I think we scared him now so he changed colors and is completely smooth.

This is a sea slug that is very flat and usually on the bottom.  Here he is floating and moving around in a wave like fashion.  He is called a Spanish Dancer for obvious reasons. 

Today we had a slow first dive.  However, it got more exciting when Ryan spotted an octopus in a hole in the reef.  Our dive master was far away, so Ryan pointed at me to use my poker stick and get the octopus out of his hole so we could take a good picture.  Yeah right....so we called our dive master over and he worked at getting him out.  Apparently the octopus was having breakfast because we found an eel that was still partially alive that was gnawed on pretty good in the octopus hole.  We got some neat pictures of the octopus.  It is amazing how much they change colors and how quickly they do it.  We also saw four cuttlefish on the dive.  Again, they also can change color and do so very quickly.  Everything down here does such an amazing job of camouflaging itself so it takes a good dive master to help you find things!

On our second dive, we went right out front of our dive shop.  We saw some different types of nudibranches and a somewhat rare zebra crab.  While taking a picture of the crab, Ryan got a little tipsy between trying to get the picture and orientate himself in the water with the big ole camera.  He put his hand down to get himself straightened up and placed it right on a unique sea urchin that they have here.  Apparently it felt like electricity running through his hand and arm.  It hurt him enough that he was debating whether or not he should surface after about 15 minutes of our 75 minute dive.  The pain subsided a little after 2 minutes and ached for another 15 minutes.  The price we pay to get good photos!  :)

Today we're taking the day off of diving and going exploring on the island.  We're going to rent a motorbike and try to see White Beach and the local waterfall.  Hopefully we don't get lost...I've heard it isn't hard though because there is about one road that goes throughout the whole island. 

Another beautiful day

The bottom picture is of a stone fish.  There were three of them tucked up under a piece of coral.  This was the only picture we got though because they kept moving around and stirring up the sand on the bottom. 



"Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name..." and for Ryan, that's not to Cheer's, it is to Sabang, Philippines!  Every time we walk down the beach people are shouting out Ryan's name.  Everyone seems to know him and they all want him to spend his money with them!  Apparently we kind of stand out in the Philippines. 

Last night we went in to the Sabang Fiesta.  There were live bands in the "square" and they had a Miss Sabang 2011 contest.  Additional vendors were out trying to sell us their Rolex, Dolche and Gabani (spelling?), and Coach products.  You couldn't walk more than two steps before someone else was trying to sell you something.  The worst was when you mistakenly made eye contact because then they followed you for two blocks trying to show you all the quality merchandise they had in their backpack. 

We discovered a great snack at one of the local restaurants...spring rolls!  Way better than any egg roll I've ever had in the states (other than our neighbor Matt's mom's spring rolls)! 
Back to diving for the day!

Verde Island

We got to dive at Verde Island yesterday.  We had to get a bigger boat to take us across the channel.  It was about 30-40 minute boat ride.  The visibility was great.  We saw lots of beautiful things.  We dove over their twice.  Our dive master got an extra third dive because I was getting the masks ready and I set it on the seat on the edge of the boat and knocked Ryan's mask into the water.  He dove in after it but it had already gone down too far for him to get.  So he put on his tank and fins and swam after it.  Of course the currents push everything all over the place and we were sitting right above a wall that started at about 30 feet and went down indefinitely.  Ryan was not so happy with me!  Luckily, our wonderful dive master found the mask, so I wasn't in so much trouble.  I guess that means I should just stop helping and let Ryan take care of everything!  :)

It was the Sabang fiesta yesterday and they had lots of music coming from town and a carnival.  There was a procession that marched down the beach with two bands and lots of people carrying candles and what I thought was a picture of some type of patron saint.  There was a guy out front that was walking along and lighting big ole bottle rockets, which made Ryan feel like he was at home!  Then when it got dark they shot off some big fireworks over the bay.  This was nice since I don't know if we will be up to see fireworks on the fourth of July.  I think our travel plans for that day are to get up at 5, leave for our 4 hour flight at 7am, have a layover, fly 14 hours to Minneapolis and get there in mid-afternoon on the fourth.  It's going to be the day that never ends!  :) 

It is already very sunny and warm sitting up in the cafeteria area to use the internet.  I think it is going to be a beautiful day to dive and lounge! 

Something new while diving

It is rainy and cloudy again today.  However, when you are sitting outside overlooking the ocean and see mountains covered in lush vegetation without being cold, you can't complain much!  However, the rain and the big waves are causing very limited visibility underwater.  We were diving this morning and for about 10 minutes of the dive, I thought I would surely lose Ryan because he always wanders away and we could only see about 15 feet. 

We got to see our very first pygmy seahorse today.  It was SOOOOO tiny!  In the picture, you can see our dive master's fingernail off to the left side to give you an idea of how small this thing was.  And it is incredibly camouflaged, so if you didn't know exactly where it was, you'd never find it!

We had a great second dive today.  We saw two octopus, a sea snake, cuttlefish, lots of fish that looked like Dory, spotted box fish, eels, nudi branches (as always), lion fish...and of course we didn't have any working cameras!  The camera that flooded the other day worked for one dive and now is on the fritz.  The newer camera wasn't focusing correctly, so we gave up with it after 10 or so fuzzy photos.

Unfortunate incident

Well, we had a little drama yesterday.  We went in for our first dive and I was a little frustrated with Ryan because I thought he forgot to put a battery in the camera he gave me.  So I didn't get to shoot any pictures during our dive.  When we came up and looked at the camera in the boat, we realized that our camera housing had water inside of it.  Not a good thing!  So we grabbed the camera out and dried it off.   We left it in the room in a ziploc bag with desiccant packs to try to dry the water out from in the camera.  This meant we had one camera for our dives.  Unfortunately, the camera we had was a macro camera, so we can't really even shoot a picture of a neat fish we see...only its eyeball!  Of course, we saw this MONSTROUS sea turtle yesterday that we couldn't get much for pictures of, but it was still really neat anyway.  We did try out the camera this morning before we started posting and it is working, but probably still has some water damage.

We took the afternoon off so we could take naps because our divemaster challenged us to some billards during the evening.  On our way to the pool game, we tried out Filipino pizza.  It wasn't quite Little Chicago!  We got the one with extra cheese and you could see where all ten pieces of cheese had melted on it! :)  But overall, it wasn't horrible.  We got our butts kicked by our dive master in pool.  The boatman and the other divers from Japan and the Czech Republic joined us as well.  It was a good time until two obnoxious Englishman (one who informed us he wasn't wearing any underwear) joined our pool table.  Because we were out and about, we managed to stay awake until 10pm.  WAHOO! 

Here are a few new pictures.

Our first sunny day

Our second dive yesterday was filled with Nudibranches.  Our dive master would stop and point one out and while he was waiting for us to take pictures of it, he would find 5 more.  We also saw a small octopus, which was amazingly blended into the coral.  Our divemaster tried to get him out so we could see him better and take some pictures.  The octopus didn't like that so much and squirted some of its black ink at us. 

We decided to just dive twice yesterday and took the afternoon off.  We sat around the pool and relaxed, hoping we could make it up past seven.  We didn't make our goal!  :)  We did enjoy the first sunny afternoon though in the pool.  It has been fairly overcast with light sprinkles since we came.  I can't imagine how hot and humid it would be without the clouds and rain though!