Malapascua

After a night a Cebu and some good food (we are learning to appreciate Pizza Hut big time... non processed cheese...) we continued on. An unbelievably bumpy bus and short boat ride away is a small island of Malapascua off the top of Cebu.

In a dive comunity Malpascua is renowned as the only place in the world with Tresher shark cleaning station. What we didn't know is that it's local name meaning is - place with bad weather (only during the time you are there, as per usual). Guess that we will remember it by that one for sure... It is exposed to winds from the sea from west, north and east. And we had plenty of all of them...

Island is really beautiful (when there is nice weather) and all-around diving is good - we heard. We stayed for over 10 days and made only couple of dives - must be a record. Locals were saying that weather wasn’t too bad, actually slightly better than a typhoon. Like that should make us happy. So, we spent a few days just idling around – reading books, watching TV (well, our laptop...) and eating. And yes, finally some good food at the resort we were staying at - they made fresh bread in the morning, pure bliss. There is a fantastic Italian restaurant on the island and we made good use of that one as well.

So, being The Place to see thresher sharks, no need to explain why we came. When we arrived, full of hope, a cold reality strikes. Horrifying stories were being told in the dive center – 5 dives and no sharks, 3 dives, 2...

For some reason (perhaps to annoy the tourists) sharks also like to get cleaned really, really early. More like during te night. On a lucky day, diving day starts at 4:30am with 1 hour boat ride and then 1 hour sitting at the cleaning station looking at nothing for 59min 30sec. And we where the luck ones, many guests have stayed for over a week and haven't seen the sharks at all. On the unlucky day, you wake up at 4:30 and after a wait at about 5:30 you are informed weather is too bad for diving. Bummer!!!

But, believe it or not, Jugs’ shark luck has finally changed! On our initial 2 dives we saw sharks both times. Only people on the boat of 16 divers! Not very popular people in resort. Days later we did some dives without sharks as well, but for quite a while were only people in resort who saw them. And not just sharks, manta reys as well (yes!!!). Because of rotten weather, we managed to do only dives on single dive site - cleaning station.

As the diving is done by the time for breakfast, there is loads of time for lying on the beach and reading books on a good day as well. Well, for the ones that can do it - sand flies are supposedly not a problem on this island, but we can prove otherwise (well, female part of our duo at least...). Nice change from our usual dive, dive, dive routine.

After 10 days on Malapascua, we head on east. Next stop, Padre Burgos on Leyte.

More pictures here.