August, 2000

In recent months the Philippines has not fared well with the world’s press. Computer viruses and political troubles in the far south have given the impression that this is one tropical idyll that could well be avoided. But what if this is also a tropical idyll that it would be foolish to bypass? We decided to investigate the Visayas region in the centre of the country.

Alona Beach

Our trek involved a flight to Cebu City, then the Supercat to Bohol, an hour and a half away, and finally a short drive to the island of Panglao just over a causeway. Home for the first week was the Alona Kew White Beach Resort and our room was just a few meters away from a pristine white beach and surrounded by beautiful gardens.

We were diving with Nautilus Dive Centre, just a moments stroll from the bungalow and they had their boat - a motorised, native outrigger about 50 foot long - loaded and waiting for us. We sailed to nearby Balicasag, renowned for it’s perimeter walls. There are several dives around the island and our first was at Black Forest, a huge forest of black coral trees. At thirty metres the gently sloping wall was awash with all their various colours - gold, silver, orange and yellow. We had only been down a matter of moments, when our guide, Sammy, grabbed us and hauled us over to one particular bush. Right in the centre was a magnificent black frogfish the size of a football and just up the slope a little we found another one in a pale beige.

Balicasag’s reef is a designated marine sanctuary and we found that no matter which segment we dived, the whole circumference was in excellent condition, from the numerous nudibranchs, small fish and sea stars through to schooling jacks, barracuda, huge fans and healthy corals. The visibility was excellent, it felt like it was close to 40 meters.

There are maybe a dozen good locations around Alona. Arco Point, just a 15 minute sail down the coast was one. A four foot hole in the top of the reef drops into a cave full of glassy sweepers, moray eels and some small soft corals. It opens out at 20 meters onto a very pretty wall with huge purple gorgonia, trees of olive green tubastrea corals and a resident blue ribbon eel.

Snake Island is a submerged plateau 15-20 metres below the surface and had the only sign of reef damage we saw. Although it had been bombed in the past, it is now showing good signs of regeneration with soft corals, sponges and seapens. However, the main reason for diving here is to see the banded sea snakes - we watched several swimming, fishing and hunting across the plateau.

Pungtud Wall is often swept by quite strong currents and when we saw it the wall was ablaze with soft corals feeding. We also discovered an orangutan crab, a school of bumphead parrots and a banded sea snake before ascending to the top of the reef to finish our dive. We stopped to photograph a particularly pretty outcrop and spotted a tiny ornate ghost pipefish, hovering in all his fringed and spotted glory in a yellow and black crinoid.

The reef just out the front of Alona Kew was also good. A small area has been buoyed off to create a protected zone underwater and this was our favourite night dive. We lost count of the number and variety of crabs and shrimp, snake eels, shells, cuttlefish, morays and sleeping puffers.

Our days were simple - 3 dives with a picnic lunch somewhere beautiful, followed by dinner at the hotel, a walk along the shore and then a couple of drinks under the stars at the beach bar, where we would sit with our toes in the cool sand and wonder why we’d never considered visiting this country before. It was just wonderful on Alona Beach. So much so that by the end of that week we really didn’t want to leave, even though our second stop was on another Philippino island. But could it be as good as this??

Dumaguete

Just an hour away was Dumaguete and our next destination, El Dorado Resort. This was quite different to our previous week, with a strong international influence and an on-site dive centre.

Our first full diving day started at a site called Daiun and we were itching to see how much had changed in such a short distance. OK, the water was still 28 degrees, but there the similarities stopped. The sand was dark, there were rocks and patches of seagrass plus the visibility was down.... MUCK diving!!! At three metres our reference point was a man-made bamboo pyramid, encrusted with corals, small sponges and all sorts of interesting creatures. However, Mark , our guide, indicated that we should head down a sandy slope that dropped off to nearly 30 metres - we were on a seahorse hunt.

At first all we could see was coconut husks, sticks and bits of rubber tire interspersed with small sponges, anemones and sea pens. We found puffer fish, shrimps and moray eels. Then at last, we spotted a seahorse attached to a stick, but we were out of bottom time so it was back up the slope, spotting more amazing creatures along the way. There was even an inimicus lurking in the sand.

We made a point of visiting Dauin daily, and every day we found a new critter - a white clown frogfish, a skinny, brown one and a blenny in a bamboo hole. There was a log with balling catfish, two old tires with dwarf lionfish and a little cave that had a tiny ornate ghost pipefish. Cockatoo waspfish and Pegasus seamoths lived in the seagrass, shamefaced crabs scuttled about the sand and newly born frogfish and lionfish at less than an inch long were always about for the spotting. We came across seahorses regularly and loads of tiny morays, flamboyant cuttlefish and even a white stonefish. One day we thought we spotted the rare and elusive mimic octopus. The next day we went back to check and glimpsed him from a distance. Very slowly we crept up until we were close enough to get a shot. He seemed equally curious about us and withdrew one long thin tentacle to probe around. This behaviour is regarded as mimicking a banded snake - and we couldn’t believe we were seeing it. Then the film ran out. We surfaced with the most enormous grins... what a find!

Dauin was one very superior muck dive as was the house reef which we liked it best at night. It was there that we found several different species of frogfish, leafish, cuttlefish and both types of mantis shrimp.

We also visited Apo Island, regarded as the big draw-card for this area. There were many good walls, drop-offs and outstanding visibility but strong currents make it quite a challenge. When we visited the sea was choppy and we tucked into a bay for protection. We were impressed at the variety and condition of the hard corals, and the huge number of schooling fish, trevally, tuna and barracuda.

A great destination

At the end of our second week, we were amazed at what we had discovered. Two completely different destinations and two widely different dive experiences - the blue water splendour around Alona and up-tempo muck-diving at Dumaguete. Both places had exceeded our expectations and put to rest any worries regarding problems either on land or under the sea.

The Philippines is particularly good value with the peso pegged to the US dollar at about 40. The dollar goes along way when a small bottle of beer costs around 30 pesos and a 2-course meal for two with drinks was around 500 pesos. Standards are generally good with rooms mostly being air-con although a little quirky when it comes to size and decoration.

Over an hours flight from southern Mindanao, the Visayas region is trouble free and unaffected by the recent political problems there.

Beth and Shaun Tierney