Coron

Coron town
Diving bangka
Hell of a climb - even without dive gear

Clear coves

Coron Island

Coron town - built out over the water

El Nido to Coron: your choices are to go back to Puerto (long and dusty) and fly, catch a Bangka for an 8 hour day crossing, which is little more than a canoe, or to catch the over night ferry, which is also the cheapest option, so no contest. However, the ferry is actually more a cargo ship, and the cargo is fish! Um! Smelly! But safe, and it turned up and I am here to tell the tale so no problem. The journey was midnight to 8am so I didn't get to see much on the journey but the dawn breaking over the limestone cliffs was worth the cost of the journey in itself. Coron is a busy little port town, built out over the water with lots of houses on stilts, and caters to the many divers that come to dive the wrecks here. The sunken fleet consists of many Japanese boats sunk at the end of WWII. Unfortunatley the waters around here are brown and murky, so it is a little like diving in the UK, though the water is considerably warmer. I dived the Akitsushima, a 150m boat tender and the Taiei Maru at 187m in length. 2 good dives but with poor visibility it wasn't enough to make me go back for more.

The other option for a dive was Barracuda lake - based on Coron island and a scramble up and over the limestone ridge to get there, the lake has an amazing thermocline running through it (two seperate layers of different temperature water). After the scramble over the rocks the 28c water was very refreshing, however once you descend to roughly 13m there is an 'oily' residue of water where the two temperatures of water meet and below this 'oily' layer the water is 37c. You can hover in the water and put your hand over your head and feel the cold water and have your other hand by your side and feel like it is in the bath. The two layers also create optical illusions and the once you descend into the warmer layer it looks like the upper layer is air rather than water and there is a line, like a false horizon, running along your line of vision. A most enjoyable, if a little out of the ordinary dive.