Category Archives: Philippines

First day of AOW/Nitrox

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15 February 19:37

 

We gave ourselves no time to rest for this and I’m starting to think that our 30 year old bodies can’t really handle it. It feels unfamiliar. But we survived today. I wonder how tomorrow will go. Or the day after tomorrow.

We woke up to clear blue sky and had the most amazing view from our balcony. Breakfast was okay, but we had to stress it through to make it to the dive center at 8am. It was already 26C this morning and I started to question bringing a 5mm wetsuit. I was afraid that we would get heatstroke from just going to the dive sites.

The Thresher Shark Divers PADI dive center lies approximately 1 minute walk from the hotel. Super convenient. As usual when diving, we signed so many papers and met with our fellow course taker from China. We were told that we were going to do to two dives straight after each other; Peak Performance Boyancy at Laplight dive site and Underwater Naturalist at Dakit-Dakit. A refresher dive was included in the first one where we filled our masks with water and cleared it but also when we lost our regulator and how to find it and start breathing again. Easy peasy! That was the one part our instructor was impressed with. We wanted to do the refresher part but once in the water it felt so natural again. We were a bit spoiled at Blue Marlin on Gili Trawangan though where the Fun Dives were all prepared by the staff, so coming to this advanced course and not really knowing how to set up the gear was embarrassing. But we are alive so we did everything correctly at least, haha!

At the briefing before boarding the tiny boat, we got to know what we were going to do, and it felt easy enough. I understand why an advanced course starts with the buoyancy part, but buoyancy is tough, especially when you are performing specific tasks and trying to do it expertly. We all did okay, but I had some serious issues with staying neutrally buoyant vertically upside down. I just flew back up to the surface. No controlled breathing could have been stronger than that force. I am guessing that my new, extremely buoyant wetsuit had something to do with it. I don’t know how many times I had to retry. After a while, the instructor picked up another weight and put on my cylinder. It was better, but I still floated to the top at the end of the minute, Oh well.

Mikael did great on all parts except swimming through the square without touching. It’s hard to know if you’re completely horizontal or not. We did 4 one minute buoyancy positions: horizontal, vertical upright, vertical facing down and buddha. I don’t know how people manages the last one with the fins trying to reach the surface all the time. But I passed somehow, I think. Then was the square we had to swim through without touching and pushing things off the bottom with our regulator by controlling our breaths. It was a frustrating first dive.

The next dive was straight after but at another dive site. A bit bumpy but not too bad. Once we were there we were changing tubes to new ones and I started feeling really bad. I have had some seriously bad boat trips, but I’ve never thrown up before. I know that it feels better once you’re in the water, but I didn’t really want to rush getting that regulator in my mouth. Ugh! But once we were down it was all good.

Underwater Naturalists is supposed to make us aware of what we are diving with, so it was basically just a fun dive at Dakit-Dakit sanctuary with artificial reefs where the instructor pointed at things and we were supposed to tell her if it was a plant, vertebrae or invertebrates. Easy enough once you got the hang of it. We saw some really cool things! Huge bat fish, stone fish, can fish (I think? It looked like a box and swam backwards). I don’t know the words for everything, but there were lots of cool small things. Except the starfish, they were huge! Both blue ones but also light brown ones with white spots.

On this dive, it started to get cold. Even with the 5mm full wetsuit. It was not too bad, but I felt sorry for Tina who only had a 2,5mm shorty. Poor woman!

After the dive I felt so tired. I love diving. But today was rough! My mask was too tight and I got a piercing headache on the leftside of my forehead, I threw up, all the heavy gear, after not sleeping too well in a room that was way too much AC’d. Not too much good food eaten in the past days.

We asked for advice for lunch and went to an Italian restaurant, easy food. And super good! Angelina’s right on the “main” beach where the ferry comes through. Quickly though, because we had to be back at the dive center for the dry part of the Nitrox course where we learn how to analyze and dive with higher concentrations of oxygen. It basically lowers the risk of nitrogen toxicity, but you have to be super aware of how deep you can go with different percentages of oxygen. With our dive computers it won’t be hard. But it’s good to know why we have these limitations and what could happen.

It started raining after that, the blue sky gone and we went back to the hotel for a nap before heading out to dinner. We woke up, feeling weird and decided to stay in and skip dinner. Filled out our dive logs and will now go to bed. Because at 6am, the boat leaves tomorrow morning for two dives with sharks!

9 modes of transportation

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14 February 23:20

 

We have arrived somewhere warm where we can hear the ocean from our hotel room, but honestly, we have no idea what this place looks like. But I’m pretty sure it feels like a paradise! We can’t wait to see what Malapascua looks like in daylight.

Traveling from the small big town of Gothenburg is bad. It’s an embarrassment to say that we have an international airport. Which is why, Mikael and I for the third time together goes all the way down to Copenhagen, Denmark to flee Sweden.

Let’s say that our day started at 8am Swedish time. At home. Excited for what’s to come. Mikael’s mom will borrow the car while we are away so we drove to the Central Station to meet up with her. Transportation mode number 1.

Öresundståget, mode number 2, the train going between Gothenburg and Copenhagen took us to Lund where we had to switch due to delays or something. Arrived a bit late to the airport, but still with plenty of time to work some more. Too bad the project I’m working in doesn’t take a vacation just because I am.

Transportation mode number 3 was the first flight to Doha. 6 hours short. Managed to squeeze in some reading, a little nap, food and that’s it.

I’ve never been to Doha’s international airport before, but it was big! So big that we had to take the electric metro to our gate. Number 4.

Gender neutral changing sign in Qatar.

 

The layover was a total of 3 hours, perfect! We barely had time to sit down. From the gate was number 5, the bus to the actual flight which was some distance away.

The last flight from Doha to Cebu was 9 hours. And I am surprised to say this, but we seriously slept through almost the whole flight! How is that even possible? We woke up in perfect timing with breakfast/dinner and had a very pleasant flight. Except that Mikael dropped one of his earplugs during the first nap, but actually managed to get it back from the guy sitting behind us. And also, for some stupid reason, when we were descending, my nose spontaneously decided to start bursting out blood. Not super convenient and no tissues very close at hand, no stewardess’ who could help. Insane. We did managed to find some eventually, but by then there was blood, haha! I really hope this doesn’t affect our upcoming dives tomorrow.

Okay, number 6, that was the taxi that drove us all the way from Cebu to Port Maya, a small harbor up north from where the ferry to Malapascua leaves. When we received the confirmation from the hotel about the taxi/boat, they had written Bremm. I corrected them, yet was still not surprised when the name on the paper read Alexandra Been. I have to admit though, Been is a first!

Okay, so we had finally arrived in our destination country, woho! But still many hours away from checking in, tired like never before. Similarities with Bali: there are no countryside roads, they are all lined with buildings, small shops and eateries. The cities blend together. And the traffic. WOW! So much traffic. But we reached the harbor after 3,5 hours which was not so bad. The driver was driving like a boss, probably a little stressed out because he had the boat crew calling him asking him where he was. It turned out that they had waited for us for 2 hours. Not our fault though.

Number 7, we are finally getting close to our final destination! The commercial ferry stops going to Malapascua after 17:30 so we had to get a private one. Not sure if the normal ferries are of this size and type, but it was a fairly big boat, and from what I’ve seen, the most common type used over here. Like the dive boats in Indonesia, but bigger. The conditions were great, otherwise the coast guard wouldn’t have allowed the late night private ferry. Another family was on it, German, visiting family for a month. Imagine having family on Malapascua to visit?

The boat ride took approximately 30 min. It was warm, the breeze was perfect, the occasional ocean splatter. A little bumpy made worse by the pitch darkness. But that pitch black makes the stars really pop out! I can’t remember seeing such a starry night sky before. I even got some decent pictures with my phone. Mikael was too tired to get his real camera up on the balcony. But I hope it will be a sky clear of clouds other days too, because this was just wow!

Okay, next thing, the tide was low, so this “big” boat couldn’t get all the way onto the beach so an even smaller had to get us the final distance. Number 8. There are no cars on this island and the only way to get things to it is by boat. And small boats at that. I was mighty impressed when they tried to move the scooter from the bigger one to the much smaller one. Impressive!

Shortly thereafter comes the last piece of this super long puzzle, the walking, number 9. It was a full 20m from the boat to our hotel where we were greeted and shown to our room with sunset view from the enormous balcony.

 

To say that this was a long day might be an understatement. I’m not even sure how many days have passed since we dragged our luggage through a snowy Gothenburg. Door to door: 31,5 hours. Can’t say yet if it was worth it. But it feels like it! I think it’s around 30C right now, the waves are rolling in on the beach right beneath us, it’s humid and our AC works wonderfully well.

 

One thing though. NO INTERNET ACCES WHATSOEVER. We didn’t see where we could buy sim cards at the airport but thought it would be fine on the way or once we got to the hotel. 7 Eleven did not have sim cards. We didn’t yet ask the hotel manager if there are any for sale on this tiny 4,8sqkm island, but will do so tomorrow. And also, since we have the room furthest away from the lobby where the router is we assume, we don’t get any signal here. No one knows we are alive except my mom who at least knows we landed (when I briefly had WiFi for 5 minutes). That’s tomorrow’s problem. Otherwise, this will be an unconnected holiday with just focus on sharks and beautiful beaches.

 

HAPPY VALENTINES!