I star to enjoy… motorcycles are invisible until they appear one meter far from the car, overtaking cars in front; a dog sitting in the middle of the road, the driver does not seem worried, I do not know if I must relax or start worrying, the fact is that my initial mood begins to decay, exhaustion attacks me and for a second I think about sleeping, but ... seeing how they dive, I much prefer to be awake: I want to know where we will derailed!! As Mario said: “half excitement, half afraid.”

    In one of these streets unpaved and full of holes, in what seems another one of the many villages we have been through, the driver turns left, entering a kind of courtyard and stops the car engine. Is this Moalboal?

    My first impression is that I'm in the middle of nowhere. If it wasn’t because I have just seen my friend Elena, I do not get off the car! She arrived in the morning, lucky her that has avoided the night driving and lucky me because she already knows the know how of the place. After leaving all my stuff we go to the bar of this peculiar place for a drink and catch up to me with how all this is. This street is the backbone of a splash of houses and dive centres, where both children and dogs and an occasional rooster run about everywhere. I have reached my destination.

    This so unknown place becomes a dear place in very little time. A group of children ask us our names, “Elena and Loli”, and from here we lose the anonymity, overnight everyone knows who we are, call us by our names, more or less, they do not know how to pronounce mine, so I was renamed “Luli”.

    Everyone says hello to us on the street, they chat amiably with us, if they can they sell you something but if not they also want the chat. When I want to know where Elena is I only need to ask the first person I meet in the street: “Where's Elena?” They always know where to find her. Unbelievable but true!

   spanish team

    In short, the group increases: Mario, Paco and Luis, the last three Spaniards who left Barajas before the monumental snow in January 9. Here we are the five Spaniards, lost in this corner of the world and eager to dive.

   The dive center Savedra is very well-equipped: there is enough space, an area to change clothes and put the equipment, the coffee area, and every evening a few boxes with beers to celebrate the end of the day!

    There is also a big board with the schedule of dives, places where we go, the guides of every group and the names of all of us that write them on it, I always with the unconditional “Luli”. The dive master are quite young, but as often happens in these places it seems that they were born diving. It is said in the centre’s motto: “Some of us must live underwater.”

    The first two days Elena and I dive in absolute minority and –and some dives just I- with the rest of the group mainly composed of Europeans: Germans, Swedes and Swiss. I noticed that being Moalboal a destination for photographic hobby, I only find another person with reflex camera and little “photographic culture”; it seems that they usually do not dive with photographers (so far).

    Underwater dives are very fast, the divers go like in a marathon, and they take me with my tongue out, too fast to take pictures! I am always the last one with a dive master. Such hurry stresses me!

    But the situation is solved with the arrival of the “reinforcements” two lovers of reefs and a Galician man put an end to this nonsense of dives. Now we have three cameras, and in my 3rd day of diving we have a boat for us. We are usually four instead of five because Elena is more relaxed about diving. In the other boat: 12-15 Europeans... who probably have unanimously requested that please we were put in another boat...

    Now the quality diving starts! Dives of 70 minutes, enjoying photography, scuba diving, watching every detail of the reef, sponges, corals, gorgonians, anemones... In short, we enjoy every dive. Jim, our guide, seems to enjoy with us or simply he has adapted to the situation. The first few days he was not looking for, and then did like us, looking in every nook.

    As in the ten days it hasn’t been sunny, wind and rain have been all the time, we began to have colds. By mid-week we are distributing antibiotics, even there was a day in which none could dive. At the end of week we were only two diving, and compensation with difficulties.

    This meant coming back to the European boat. But there was no return, we didn’t lose the ground gained, Jim continued to be our guide. Curiously, we all were falling slowly, the Europeans reached the 20 meters and at that deep it was time for the “electric shocks”: they run out suddenly and disappeared, even though the visibility was more than 20m.

    50 minutes later they were all in the boat. The ship decided to make two trips: landed the first round and came back again to pick up the two Spaniards who went out 20 minutes later with around 100 BAR in the bottle: “why don’t we stay with our equipment and spend the 100 BAR in the house reef,? Fanatic!

DIVES AND MARINE LIFE

    Undoubtedly, the star dive is Pescador Island. It is ranked as one of the best of the Philippines. It is spectacular! With over 500 different species of hard corals, it is considered one with the most biodiversity on earth. I could dive four times here; bad weather prevented us from repeating it because of the difficulty of crossing the 5 km that separate it form the coast. Our guides had three toad fish located, and we saw them every day at the same depth (about 20 meters) over the same sponges.

    Walls covered with black coral, huge gorgonians, sponges, Plerogyra sinuosa, Alveoporas, Heliofungias, Tubastrea micrantha, Tubastrea cocciegea and Fungia scutaria. Also, among SPS Mycedium, Distichopora violacea, and Millepora dicotoma. Among octocorals they highlight Lanthella basta, Dendronepthya sp., Lytophyton sp. They are also very relevant gorgonians as Annella mollis; crinoids as Comantheria briareus, Liparometra regalis… and tunicates as Rhopolacea crassa o la Polycarpa aurata (To be noticed the influence of Mario and Paco and their aquarist knowledge!)

    Besides finding an infinite variety of nudibranchs, scorpion fish, moray eels, damsels, turtles, etc. this is a place with many currents where we can see pelagic and whitetail sharks. In the last dive, at ten meters deep, taking a picture of a boxfish, I turned my head when listened my mates calling at me and I saw myself facing a whitetail shark a bit bigger than me that was coming towards me without any fear, probably to see what I was.

    Sampaguita Reef is a stretch of the reef that runs parallel to the coast. Although the departure is by boat, we also could arrive from the coast because the distances are very little. It is one of the prettiest dives in the area because of the variety of corals that we find, the magnificent coral table, large, larger even than a diver with open arms, as Mario proved on several occasions. Over all, it stresses for its pygmy seahorse located on a gorgonian at 30 meters deep, and for being a dive where at sunset we can see the Synchiropus splendidus, better known as Mandarin.

    This area is usually the war for which whale sharks go at certain times, as in this one that starts. The guides warned us to be alert and in every dive we are looking for the precious white dots that characterize the whale shark, here called Tiki Tiki. There is a shoal of sardines where we have seen it some times during these days. Every dive is exciting, full of hope by listen “Tiki Tiki” but we are not lucky and they haven’t appeared. Maybe next time!

THE DESTINATION

    Come! For everything!

    Although the first impression of the place was quite estrange, you will be immediately captivated by the charm of its people and its wonders under the sea. For ten days I have felt at home in this little town of Moalboal, where a smile never lacks.

    It is one of those destinations that you do not want to leave. When it is time to go you feel a knot in your stomach and emotion invades you. It is difficult to keep that teardrop that wants to tear down and you discover the depth that this strange place is in your heart. Remember that you have a life somewhere else waiting, new illusions, new trips to organize, but something has changed, which Moalboal, its people and its waters have left within you. The suitcase becomes full of sensations, laughter and pictures. It has been a Happy End!!

    If you like to say something about this article , you can write to: loli@buceo-virtual.com.

    Interesting information: Abando Dive Travel, Juan Carlos Martinez Toucedo: losrealejos.1020.jo@viajesiberia.com.

    Dive Center Savedra: www.savedra.com

Text and Pictures: Loli Alcarria