This entry comes to you from Bisa Bay Resort in Anilao in the Batangas Barangay (region) of the Philippines. Joe is busy peeling a yellow ripe mango while Anette is gearing up for writing this blog entry. The stars are out again and the sea is gently lapping onto the shore behind us and the insect repellent is doing a decent enough job at keeping malaria at bay!
We’re unwinding after an eventful and exciting day in the water. As previously mentioned we were hoping to learn to dive while here in the Philippines. Our friends in China, Mark and Weiwei, are both diving-instructors (as of this week). Their passion and excitement about diving really made an impact on us, and we decided that we just had to try it out for ourselves. Being adventurous (as we like to think that we are), we decided that if possible – both financially and practically – we wanted to “dive” straight in with a PADI Open Water (OW) Certificate, which allows you to dive on your own (with a buddy) whenever and wherever you like. As we were fairly certain that we would enjoy the activity, and as it’s an international qualification, we thought it better value to skip try-dive, where you don’t learn the practical skills and dive theory. While we were still in China, Anette had started looking for dive-operators in the Philippines, and she was recommended to dive in Anilao, as it’s one of the best dive-spots in the world, according to the general diving community, so of course, not wanting to miss such a treat, she started looking for good OW rates there. The rates seemed either very expensive or the resorts charged an obscene amount of money, and it was increasingly looking as though diving had to remain a distant dream. Anette got so frustrated with it, in fact, that she just threw her hands in the air in the end and said, ‘right, let’s just go there, and if we dive then it’s a bonus!’ So while planning is Anette’s ‘thing’, she had to go with spontaneity for once, and pray for some good wind!
As we got to Anilao – from Tagaytay, where we went with Rudy on our first night in the Philippines – we found this lovely little and simple beach resort, which we described in the previous post. There was no diving available, and again things were looking bleak. After an interesting night’s “sleep”, where we were constantly woken up by all the strange noises coming from outside our bamboo hut, we went swimming in the sea and lying on the beach in the morning, and then went to the little tourist information centre in the town proper. There, almost by accident we saw a little flyer from a PADI 5 star dive centre whose rates were quite acceptable. They contacted an instructor there, who came down and negotiated a better price with us. We were going to dive!
After going to the dive shop and trying out the gear and getting fitted and then seeing the dive centre, we went back to our hut where we found it very difficult to think about much else. Unfortunately the next day, when we were supposed to have started the course, the previous day’s sun-bathing had caught up with us, and we couldn’t face cramming our slightly sore bodies into a tight wetsuit, so instead we went there simply to start with all the academics you have to complete as part of the course. So, we guess it worked out pretty well anyway – only we had to wait a bit longer before taking our ‘first breath’ underwater.
When we woke up early this morning our skin felt a lot better, and we were full of anticipation for what today would bring. Would we like it? Were we going to be comfortable underwater? And would we see any fish? Tessie, the owner of this resort, had made us a lovely breakfast to start the day full of energy, and then we set off to MAK Divers a few minutes away from here by tricycle. After a long briefing, everything has to be properly done, we were finally allowed to suit up and start prepping our tanks and BCD’s. Once Albert, our instructor, was satisfied, we lifted the heavy equipment onto our backs (imagine an overweight and badly packed hiking-rucksack) and we started moving towards the water. We were so excited and a bit nervous!
The way the PADI OW Course is designed is that you must do 5 academic modules, 5 confined dives (usually in a pool with shallow water) and then 4 dives in open water down to 18 meters. Upon passing the course, you get a certificate and card, which is internationally recognized and allows you to dive all over the world by yourself (without a dive master or instructor). Our dive centre doesn’t have a pool, but is blessed with a very calm sea right outside the centre, so our confined water modules take place in the sea with the fish! We feel really grateful for this. It means that we get used to drinking saltwater from the very beginning, and hopefully it will allow us to control our buoyancy faster than pool-divers, as the sea is full of salt! Furthermore we have the luxury of being the only ones in the class, so as Albert is only teaching the two of us, we get extra attention and training, which is really nice!
Taking our first breath underwater, was in a word, weird! Of course there’s a small (or large?!) part of your brain telling you that you can’t trust this bit of rubber in your mouth, but lo and behold it worked, and it was fun! We quickly progressed to being able to take out our regulator (mouthpiece) out underwater and put it (or another) in again and continue breathing, and later learned to switch between snorkel and regulator while swimming just below the surface. From there we moved on to learning how to manage our mask – clearing it of water, taking it off (Anette found this particularly challenging) and putting it on again, and balancing ourselves under the water. Albert then took us down to 4 meters to see some reef and fish. We saw a scorpion fish, a gobi fish and a porcupine blow fish – to name a few, and Gil from ‘Finding Nemo’ as well as lots of beautifully coloured fish happily swimming around in their own world (you don’t get that in a pool!). It was so awesome!
We did two of our five confined dives today, and tomorrow we will continue with number three as well as do our first Open Water dive down to 12 meters. We just hope our buoyancy will have improved by then. We’re really tired now, as this has been such an exciting and challenging day. We both feel really happy as we didn’t drown, nor did we panic or feel like we were going to drown, which was a worry (still is…) and above all we just had so much fun in the water. The mango is long gone, and we think it’s probably time for a little bit of homework in our dive books, and then it’s time for bed before the alarm awakes us at 6:30 tomorrow morning – gotta rise with the fish when you are diving, right?
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