19 February 23:46

My hands this morning were almost miraculously healed! Aloe Vera is the shit for real! They were still red of course, but I could move them and touch them without them hurting or stretching the skin. My face is still a tomato, but definitely doesn’t hurt.

We got to sleep in a bit today, the boat to Gato Island didn’t leave until 11am. I had such high expectations of Gato, and they weren’t quite really met to be honest.

The boat ride was 40 minutes and before even getting on the boat, I was feeling a little bit off. Probably exhaustion. Three dives yesterday probably did that. Feeling off is fine, because that is gone once you’re in the water. But scuba diving is tough. Putting on a super tight wetsuit is not easy, it’s squeezing everything. Gearing up, putting on the weight belt which then pushes on your stomach. Making sure everything is in order, being a little bit anxious before jumping in. Everything around scuba diving is hard. Even the boat ride can be bad, even in perfect conditions as we’ve had this whole week so far. But once you descend, everything is fine. There is nothing else then what’s in front of you.

The hype around Gato Island was of course concerning the tunnel/cave diving and the reef sharks. We weren’t allowed to go inside the cave since we didn’t have 50 logged dives yet (as a safety measurement from the dive center which I totally respect) and that was disappointing. The second disappointing thing was the visibility. It was so bad. We couldn’t see the bottom and not even the instructor who went first. Eventually we found the bottom and down there the visibility was much better, but still so much worse than all the previous dives. Outside the cave, was all about the macro diving. And we did see some really cool stuff honestly. On the first dive, the coolest thing we saw was definitely the sleeping white tipped reef sharks. And they were big, like 2m? Lying on the bottom of a cave, opening and closing their mouths to breathe. There were two caves and like 2-3 in each. The first cave was under a rock formation that I had to swim through, it was scary but I saw the sharks and it was so cool. Mikael actually swam around the formation on the other side and unfortunately missed the sharks. But, lucky us, there was another cave right on the other side where more sharks slept. I got really close and it was so incredible.

Huge nudibranch

White tipped reef sharks sleeping in a cave

Shark sighting

Other things we saw was electric clam, huge nudibranchs, lots of soft corals, a fish with a big horn, clownfish of course. The electric clam was really amazing. It sat inside a crevice and there were literally visible pulsing lights coming off of it, like how?! Nature is amazing!

We had our safety stop in the middle of the turbid water which was a new experience for me I think. Probably not, but so far on this trip we haven’t really done the safety stop in mid water. But it was fine.

The surface interval was great. The BBQ was incredible like yesterday, but I still felt a little bit off and wasn’t too excited about jumping in again due to the low visibility. It was an okay dive and we did see cool stuff, but both of us had troubles with our buoyancy and I think Mikael was very nervous about the visibility because he consumed a lot of air and both dives were really short, only 44 and 36 minutes. That was fine by me though. I agree that it was not perfect diving conditions, at least when we have been spoiled with much better conditions on all of our dives together.

The second dive was really scary going down. We saw nothing and our divemaster disappeared in front of us. So they had to shine their lights up towards us so we could see where they were. But like before, the bottom was much better. As soon we reached the bottom, our divemaster showed us a coral on which so many pygmy horses lived. I can’t believe they are that tiny! Holy cow! So cute!

The rest of the dive we actually didn’t see anything too exciting. Just the normal Filippino things.

Boat ride back, cleaning equipment, writing logbook and then dinner with a German guy at the only vegetarian place on the island where they also had live music and fire show. Definitely the most popular restaurant close by. Also super good food! And cheap. For all three of us (including 5 deserts and four main courses) the total ended up being 410 SEK. Crazy!

We signed up for a dive tomorrow at a new dive site at 14:00. But we’ll see how we feel. I was feeling better after the two dives, but that’s when Mikael caught whatever I had had. 5 dives on 3 days is intense so a day of resting tomorrow might not be too bad, but one dive close by could be fine. We’ll see.

Time to hit the bed with my aloe vera socks hands again. Goodnight