July 2011

Deciding it was time for vacation, I managed to collect a week and escape to Philippines for 10 days in July. The plan was simple, dive and train Balintawak (stick-fighting). I found a place on Cebu that was famous for diving, nothing else, and my Balintawak trainer was as least on the same island. I rented a hut for 10 USD per day without aircon and was disconnected from email and Internet for a week.

I managed to get four days of diving, including the advanced open water. Favorite dive site as in the photos below where a lot of sardins and even sharks (for the lucky ones) could be seen.

Movie from the dive visible here:

Moalboal is a quiet and boring place if you don’t dive. For me it was perfect. Between dives I rested in a hammock reading on my kindle

You can say it is very close to the water, taking into account that there is no beach, so when high tide it is on the water, and at low tide rocks.

As icing on the cake, Henry which I last time met 2004 had time to come by for training three days.

And a video of us training here.

And then some photos from Manila where I stopped one day on the way back:

All photos visible here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sigurdsson/sets/72157627392281297/

The second day of diving included three dives: One at a max of 12 meters, and two on 18 meters.
The first on 18 meters included three wrecks. Very nice diving site with aquatic life in the wrecks and good visibility. Also had some important experiences when it comes to checking your own equipment before the dive!
Last dive was along a steep coral reef wall where we couldn’t see the bottom. The best dive where you could look upwards along the wall and into cracks.

Credit to Trendy, my instructor at Dive Dojo, for the photos below from the second dive.

Location: Monkey Beach, Sabang, Philippines
Max depth: 12 meters
Average depth: 8.9 meters
Bottom time: 30 minutes

First dive by the coral reef at Monkey beach. Strong current due to tide.

Credit to Trendy, my instructor at Dive Dojo, for the photo below. (www.divedojo.com)