Philippines trip report. April 2007

None of the three of us had done a trip of this length before, so we were not all that sure how the trip would go. we had heard horror stories about the long plane ride from other travellers in the past. Actually, since we were flying Japan Airlines that was really not a problem. I wish the US carriers would copy JAL. Or maybe I should say i wish the US travellers should copy the Japanese tourists. it was about 80% Japanese on the plane. No shoving, no pushing, no people that decided bathing was really just a pointless excercise. No one was trying to bring enormous rolling luggage on as carry on items. I mean we got 300+ people loaded on a 747 in less than 20 minutes. The flight attendants were all cookie cutter gorgeous Asian ladies and were all just as gracious and helpful as could be. No bad attitudes, no overheard griping and complaining about the work schedule or personal lives. The food was really tasty and there was unlimited free booze. They had a little movie/TV screen at each seat and a selection of 8 movies to watch.

Narita airport is clean, neat, well laid out, and easy to move around in. The one downside is a real lack of restaurant choices. in an airport a little smaller than Ohare, there were only 2 places to eat and not many choices on the menu. However, there must have been 30 stores selling duty free perfume, handbags, cameras, etc.

After 13 hours to Narita, and another 5 to Manila, the easy part was done. We had specific instructions from the resort on where to meet to be picked up at the airport. However, when we finally waded throught the sea of people (even at midnight) to the pick up area, there was no ride. An hour and a half and 2 phone calls later we finally figured out that they were waiting upstairs for us in a different area from where they said. They took our bags and we joyfully climbed into the air conditioned van to our hotel. We thought the worst was over until we found that one of John's bags never made it into the van. Of course since it was 1AM, we didnt find that out until the next morning. More on that later. The next morning we were met at the hotel Intercontinental and headed off into the 3 hour traffic jam between Manila and Batanga City. Except for the 200 foot billboards and the occasional palm tree and jeepney, we could have been in one of the dumpier chicago suburbs. finally we arrived at Batangas and got aboard a Bangka boat for the final ride to the resort. A Bangka boat (not sure on spelling) is a narrow 20-30 foot long boat with bamboo outriggers on either side. These outriggers keep the boat very stable in the waves and make it seem like a much bigger boat. The boat ride was a very pleasant 1 hour to the resort. Our first glimpse of Sabang Beach wasn't all that encouraging. It is a very densly packed group of homes, resorts, and stores jammed in a small cove/beach area. resorts are literally built with shared walls between their buildings. The beach itself was packed with bangka boats and smaller outboard skiffs. The hillsides were covered in palm trees and either end of the ended in a large rocky point. The water did not have the crystal clear blue color of most tropical destinations, rather a greenish cast. There was no pier and the boat just bullied its way to the beach through the assembled boats. We offloaded using a very narrow wooden plank with 2x4 pieces nailed on for steps. The first close inspection was even worse. kids were everywhere and people were selling stuff on the beach from backpacks. We were met by Karin, one of the dive staff who led us through a labyrinth of tiny streets to the resort itself. Atlantis Dive Resort is more or less centrally located among the tightly packed resorts on the main cove. It is split by the "main road" which more or less parallels the beach front. The dive shop and bar are along the water and the resort itself is farther back. It has the stucco/thatched roof combination we recognized from the brochure. A large front desk/restaurant building dominated the front of the resort. We were asked if we wanted to relax, but all of us just wanted to get all the paperwork done and out of the way. We were given a quite comprehensive tour of the facility and our coupons for massages, free drink, etc. The rooms were quite interesting. A very unusual architecture a little reminiscient of Scuba Club Cozumel. The walls are all stucco and the bed is a hard concrete form with a mattress on top. There is a very open look to the room with no dresser or closet, rather shelves and open hangars. The A/C worked well (at least in my room) and there was plenty of space to spread out my stuff. There was a tragic lack of electrical outlets, however. I could only find one and that one was in the bathroom. I had 3 battery chargers and my laptop transformer to plug into one outlet. Not good. The resort did provide a dry room with many outlets for cameras and battery chargers, though. The power was 220V.

The Philippines are quite far south and it is HOT there. We were there at the start of their summer. 90F temperature and extremely high humidity. This wasn't an issue if you were diving, but each morning when you left your cool hotel room the heat would hit you like a wall when you stepped out. Conversely, once you were accustomed to the heat or were wet from a dive, you felt like you were entering a walk in freezer when you came back to your room. I don't think my air conditioner ever shut off the entire week. With the high heat and humidity, we were supposed to drink lots of water. Unfortunately, the water from the faucets was not drinkable. They had bottled water in the dive shop and restaurant, but you had to get water from the mini bar ($.75 per bottle) or buy it in town ($.40) to brush your teeth or mix your crystal light. Brent had some water purification tablets and a backpackers water filtering pump, but it almost seemed easier to just buy a big water bottle in town for the week.

Normally we like to walk to town at some point during the trip. At Atlantis this is a 30 second process. The resort sits smack in the middle of town. There must be strict rules as to where the peddlars can go and such, because no one bothered us on the resort grounds, but the second you stepped off, you were followed like the pied piper of Hamlin by a group of people all selling watches, rain sticks, DVDs, and jewelry. The restaurants and discoes had young ladies out front to try to entice you inside. Everyone was very polite and even the peddlars would leave with a firm "no, thank you". The main street was very narrow. There are no cars, just the occasional motorcycle or scooter trying to navigate the narrow crowded street. The area was pretty dirty and broken down. some areas were more or less dirt road, some well paved, and in some places the street just disappeared into the beach only to reappear later farther down. One minute you would be among shops, and the next minute you were in the middle of another resort as the main walkway seemed to transect most of the resorts. Despite the close proximity of all these people to our resort, we were able to leave stuff around; cameras in rinse tanks, dive gear on hangars to dry, etc.

The people were very friendly. We stood out like sore thumbs among the shorter Philippine natives. The worst you could say was that some were just indifferent to us. No one expressed any hositility at all. Most just wanted us to buy something. Most people were dressed in western style tshirts and shorts and everyone wore flip flops if anything. All the teenagers were yapping into cell phones just like here.

The dive shop was well laid out. Once we had gotten our weights and set up our gear for the first time, we never had to mess with it again except to analyze our Nitrox tanks. Well, that isnt entirely true because a few times they put my reg on upside down and several times my tank was rotated 90 degrees. The boatmen loaded up everything onto the boats and changed tanks throughout the day. We were rarely on the same boat for more than one day and several times we changed boats during the day. We used 2 types of boats during the week. One was the afrorementioned bangka and the other was a 20 foot or so outboard skiff. generally we preferred the skiff since it was faster, quieter, and was easier to back roll off of. There was no swim platform or big diver ladder on either boat. All water entries were backroll which made it a bit tougher with cameras. When done diving, you swam up to the boat (watching not to get clobbered by the outrigger on the bangkas) and removed your weights and BCD and handed them up to the boatmen. These guys were mostly good with the gear although some had trouble lifting a nearly 50 pound weight integrated BC when they were only 100 pounds themselves. There were no heads on the boat and really no dry storage. They had no camera rinse tanks on the boats, either, nor was there a cooler for drinks. The boat rides were usually only 10 minutes or less, though, and we always came back to the resort between dives so you didnt really need a lot of stuff on the boat. Generally we got suited up before boarding due to the limited space aboard. The week we were there the resort was not nearly full, so we had the luxury of having the boats pretty much to ourselves and maybe another couple. They have a maximum of 6 divers per divemaster.

The dive briefings were very comprehensive, but the site we dived often didnt resemble the drawing. The currents and tides were quite errattic and several times we had to alter the site when we got there because of the strong current. either that or on the occasional site which had little or no current, we went so slowly finding lots of critters to photograph that we never made it to half of the planned dive site. The DMs were good about working with our group to make the dive we wanted, not what they wanted. Our group was very experienced and didnt need much hand holding, so the DMs could spend more time looking for cool stuff. We made 2 dives in the morning, and 2 in the afternoon. There was a big board to sign up for each dive, but we just told the DM to sign us up for ALL the dives.

The dives were generally 50 minutes long although some DMs would extend this a few minutes if asked. All the dives were drift dives, so we had to stick pretty close to the divemaster. There are no moorings any where so they boat just dropped us off and came back when they saw the DMs dive float pop to the surface. In some areas there was a lot of boat traffic so sticking together as a group was a necessity.

Most of the dive sites were sloping reefs in the 40-60 foot range. The bottom topography ranged from flat sandy bottoms to patchy coral to large vertical coral structures. In general there was less hard coral than the caribbean and more rocks and soft coral. Crinoids were everywhere. hundreds covered the reefs in all colors, shapes, and sizes. There were enormous anemones in wild vase shapes, flat plates 2 feet across, and strange bulbous structures. soft corals and gorgonians were abundant as well as a few sponges. There were unbelievable numbers of fish. Anthias (small 2 inch orange fish) were schooling everywhere. Butterfly fish, wrasses, small angels, and some parrotfish were abundant. We saw a few snapper and grouper like fish, but not many. Very few big fish were seen. A couple of jacks, an occasional foot long puffer and one humphead parrotfish were the biggest fish we saw. OK, we did see one small white tip shark, too.

The water temperature was 80/81F and visibility was typically 50 feet or so. There was a lot of particulate matter suspended in the water which explains the prolific crinoids and anemones. This is not a destination to bring the wide angle lenses. With all the particulate matter and the lack of large fish, Macro is the way to go. We were amazed at the number and type of nudibranchs we saw on almost every dive. On a normal dive trip we might see 2 or 3 nudibranchs, but on this trip we saw probably 50 on every dive. Little crabs, anemone fish, scorpion fish, pipefish, moray eels, and starfish were also commonly seen. There were a few new and odd critters such as sea snakes, cuttle fish, lionfish, frogfish, sea moths, and the much sought after blue ringed octopus. Every dive we saw some new species of fish.

In addition to our package dives, we did a Mandarin fish dive, a night dive, and a trip to the Verde Islands. OK, the mandarin fish dive was kind of a joke. We were literally diving in the harbor a stone's throw from the beach in 15 feet of water. The Mandarin fish are tiny colorful fish that spawn around dusk in patches of broken coral. Unfortunately the time they are most active is right at dusk and they are not all that easy to spot in the rubble. Lights will scare them off. They are very cool once you see them, though. The night dive was again, pretty much in the harbor. We asked several times if we could just grab a tank and go from shore, but with the tides and the boat traffic, they simply don't allow that. It took far longer to load the dive boat than to drive to the dive site. The Verde island trip was worthwhile. It was a much longer boat ride so we brought all of our tanks aboard and had lunch on the island. One problem was that they had no camera tank on the boat. Letting a camera sit for 10 minutes is OK. Letting it sit for 3 hours is not. So we rigged up a cooler and filled it with salt water so the cameras would at least not dry out. Fresh water was way too precious for a camera rinse tank on a boat. Besides, with no pier, everything has to be carried out to the boat from the beach so filling/cleaning it would be a problem. Anyway, the Verde islands dive site is a tiny speck of rock jutting out in the strong current of the ocean. The rock extends like a wall down to about 100 feet or more deep. The visibility was tremendous at well over 100 feet. Accordingly, there were fewer large soft corals and crinoids, but more encrusting corals and sponges on the wall. The current was playing tricks on us and twice we had to change direction on the dive. After the second dive, we experienced a significant down current. John and I got sucked into it and pulled quite a ways down. It is quite disconcerting to see bubbles going DOWN and being powerless to ascend against the current. You could see the tornado-like vortex in the water. Once we made it to the surface, we were literally in a washing machine. Strong currents and high waves battered us for a few minutes until we could struggle out of it. Once we were a dozen yards away from the vortex, it was business as usual, but I shudder to think what could/would have happened if there were less experienced divers among our group.

After the first 2 dives, we went ashore for a BBQ lunch. We parked at a very nice beach and dined on roast pork, chicken, and fish.

One interesting thing about diving at Atlantis Resort is that there is no dock. We had to board and get off the boat using a narrow ramp. Of course the 4 foot tidal change each day meant that some dives you got off right at the resort stairs, while on the afternoon dives you had to walk 100 yards to get back to the resort.

Between dives we either got snacks from the restaurant staff or a full lunch. The food was very good. We typically had a full breakfast buffet each morning, either a cooked dish or stir fry for lunch, and a choice of 2 or 3 main courses for dinner. Typically we had a choice of fish, beef, or chicken. Not too many scary local dishes were served and those that were were quite tasty.

Each room had a mini bar with cokes and beer and such, but if you walked just half a block down the road, you could get cokes and beer for half the price of the resort. Of course the minute you stepped off the resort property you could be the target of the local salesmen. It seemed everyone wanted to sell us something from fake Rolexes to rain sticks, to jewelry, to camouflage shorts. Prices were very negotiable even in the stores. Most of the peddlars could be deterred with a simple “no thank you”. Only a few kids were begging for money.

When the diving was done, John and I decided to take a tour of the area. The resort had their own tour, but again, we found a guy on the beach selling them much more cheaply. For about $40 each we got a 4-5 hour tour via jeepney (a highly customized local transport loosely based on surplus US Army jeeps) and water buffalo cart of the Tamaraw waterfalls, some other falls whose name escapes me, a local village, and a suspension bridge. OK, not the most extravagant of tours, but we got to see a lot of the countryside and a lot of the local populace. We both felt it was well worth the money.

Unfortunately all too soon it was time to reverse the arduous process of getting to the resort and retrace our steps back to Manila. Except for the traffic which reminded me of the Dan Ryan at rush hour, we had no problems getting to Manila in time for our flight. Our flight from Manila didn’t arrive in Japan in time to make our flight to Chicago, so we were put up in the Nikko Hotel Narita. My one big regret on this trip was that we didn’t structure in a few extra days in Japan. As it was, all we had time to do was hop on a bus to Narita city and poke around for an hour or so. The city wasn’t very exotic, though, and except for the Japanese symbols it could have been Chicago. The Nikko hotels was very functional if not overly luxurious. The large lobby and ornate chandeliers led us to believe we had big rooms, but sadly this wasn’t the case. My room was maybe 12 foot square. Just a bed, a desk, and a small bathroom. Kind of like the stateroom on a ship. It was too early in the year for them to have the AC on so we had to open the windows. By this time we had come to accept the fact that most Asians have a higher temperature comfort level than we do. We found this out on the plane ride home, too. They had the heat on and there were no individual vents. Even though it was actually an hour shorter due to tail winds, the return flight seemed much longer. But we arrived safely with all our luggage back in Chicago.

The biggest worry about the trip was the travel time. That proved to be a pain, but once we arrived, we all felt it was well worth it. I would DEFINITELY put Atlantis Dive Resort on the repeat list.