Back from Angeles City into real life I received a txt from a friend who stays here for a couple of month to write his first novel. He was a student of mine back at Asia Divers in Puerto Galera and I met him on www.Dumagueteinfo.com accidently. He asked me to meet for a “coming-home” drink at Hayahay. Hey, no problem, quick shower, on the bike and off Rhoody goes. At Hayahay we met Mike Feeney who has a small Diveshop at the Boulevard. He told me that he may have an Apo Island Trip coming friday and we decided to join.

We met at 8:00 at Mikes Adventure-Diveshop to sign in the paperwork. and jumped into Mikes Easy-ride with 3 girls who wanna go to Apo for snorkling. Mike asked me If I have a problem to take 2 more divers as they called him with short notice. He ensured me that they are all good so no problem with me. We met in Dauin where his boat is. After the tanks and the were on the boat we started our 40 minute boatridt to Apo. We had a nice mixed group, a swedish, french, philippino, british, german mix ensured thatthere was a lot to talk about.

The first divesite was Chapel-Point, a shallow corall plateau goes into a wall on 8 meters and drops down to 40+ meters. The wall is coverd with softcorals and sponges. Along the wall are some small caves and overhangs. In one of those we found a blue ribbon eel, 2 clown frogfish and some good-sized scorpionfish. When the wall ends it is time to multilevel up to reach the area of Katipanan where you see beautifull softcoral gardens as far the visibility allows. The snorklers were already on the boat, so we left the water after 58 minutes.

We spend our surface interval on the Island, where 20 “lovely” T-shirt ladies welcomed us to show us their souvenirs. There is a lovely little resort on the Island where we went for lunch. As Apo Island is very small and the main-income of the people there is fishing it was a bit sureprising that the resort was out of stock for all fish-dishes on the menu…  

While we divers wanted to go for the second dive the snorklers enjoied to hang around and moved very slowly. The swedish guys started already with SanMiguel Light, so we had to force them a bit to go back to the banka.

The second dive started at Rock Point east. The stunning corals at the entry area  are only at a depth of 3 meters and goes over into a steep slope to the right. After 10 minutes into the dive a gentle current picks up to bring you around the corner to Rock Piont west. While drifting along the slope you feel like in a aquarium. Millions of colorful reef-fish just surrounding you with their nose in the current.  After passing the corner the current stops and you finally make your safety stop in the soft-coral gardens around the mooring bouje of Rock-Point west. After 65 minutes we were back on the boat. A bit cold as we had no sun.

The trip back was a bit rough and nothing and nobody stood dry on the boat. Back at Dauin into the easy-ride and 25 minutes to the dive-shop where we finally got some food and cold drinks. Diving with the smaller dive-shops here is different as you will miss some convinience of the big resorts but it also has more charme. I can highly recommend Mikes Adventure-diveshop for this unforgetable trip.

cheers

Rhoody