Malapascua and then some

So we had a very long weekend because of the confusing state of affairs we call holidays in this country. It was only prudent that I take a long vacation which involved me diving in some remote island. In this case, it was called Malapascua island.

It started out as a one-hour plane ride followed by a four-hour drive to the pier then another hour of a boat ride to cross to the island. By the time we got there, we were hungry, wet and tired (not necessarily in that order) but we had one dive to do because well, we wanted to.

We had planned it as a dusk dive but one delay led to another and we ended up doing a night dive instead. Well, great way to start the vacation I suppose. After that, it was drinks and waiting for our dinner which took an hour per order. Wait, let me back up a bit here.

Ok, so when we arrived at the island it was around 2:00 pm and we proceeded to have lunch at the resort. We were all very hungry at this point and I don't think any one of us would have cared if they served us instant noodles. To my surprise, they did serve us instant noodles and we did care, very much indeed thank you.

Ah well back to my talk about dinner. It was in one of the local restaurant/bar which only had one cook and one burner on the stove. So it took an hour to prepare for an order of whatever except maybe the drinks which meant we were all tipsy by the time the food came over.

I had ordered a fish fillet with butter and lemon sauce. Surprisingly enough, the one-hour wait is worth it (that is if you're not starving and pissy about drinking first) because the servings were generous and the food was, to my humble critique, five-star class.

After dinner we had a couple more drinks and off we went to bed to get some rest for our 4:00 am dive run to watch sharks clean their teeth.

4:00 am came and went and we were all up (hungry and grouchy for lack of coffee in a most ungodly hour) and ready to board the boat. We had commissioned two boats to take us out to the thresher shark area (which is mostly open water and about 70 - 80 feet below is a huge plateau with a 1000 foot drop) but our boat had to transfer all our stuff from the night before to another boat. Suffice it to say, we had been delayed for an hour and by the time we got to the dive site, the sun was already shining and the sharks were long gone (them being sensitive to light).

We went to a couple more dive sites but one in particular was one I liked very much (next to the thresher shark area) because it was a 15 meter long cavern underwater at about 60 - 70 feet and it was magnificent. We didn't actually see much but the locals say that it is usually housed with white-tipped reef sharks, sea snakes and other similar underwater cavern creatures. We did sea a white-banded sea snake on our way to the surface though and a few of us saw a white-tipped reef shark hidden under a coral formation.

After we headed back to the beach for a little relaxation, I decided to try out a most unusual but enticing sight, a floating bar (which I like to call a water bar because it's on water). And that's where I saw what was probably the most beautiful sunset I have ever laid eyes on. It was picturesque, an absolute thing of beauty. One that would most certainly guarantee a marriage proposal had there been anyone to marry at that moment.

So it was that I had thrown down a couple of vodkas and off I went to dinner with my compatriots. It was a most serene night and suffice to say, I was very drunk so off I went to get a massage and then fall asleep.

We woke up again in the wee hours of the morning in hopes that we would get a glimpse of the main attraction again, which were the thresher sharks. It wasn't so bad this time but the dive operator fucked up again so there was a bit of a delay. It was all forgotten when we hit the water because we saw the most amazing sight (two of them, in fact), thresher sharks. Big, fat long-tailed and quite shy of humans, they would come up out of their underwater refuge to have themselves cleaned by smaller fish.

After that, we had to call off other dive plans because it started raining, the wind was strong and the calm waters became small swells that made some of our crew sick. We had a few hours to kill before heading back to Cebu city in preparation for our flight back to Manila the next day.

I had some friends in Cebu city and after arriving they took me out for a drunken spree and paint the town red (or whatever color I paint it with). But that's a story for another day I'm afraid.

I would definitely go back to Malapascua for diving or for just plain beach-bumming, getting drunk and relaxing. It reminded me of how Boracay used to be. I didn't mind the fact that there were no fresh water showers, or that we had to either settle for fast crappy food or slow gourmet meals. It was a beautiful experience and one I would enjoy going back to.