A calm morning
Sunset
In case you've forgotten what I look like (it's a trick of the light - I am not really very brown!)
Sunset
The tree houseThis is my kind of diving! I moved on from Alona beach to stay and dive at Cabilao, an island a few hours north from Alona. As I was settling my bill at Alona and discussing my next destination I was told 'the diving is not as good at Cabilao as it is at Alona ' - how wrong they were. I cannot decide whether it was just a sales tactic to try and make me stay on Alona or whether I was just talking to a very different kind of diver to myself, either way, I am glad I did not listen. A tricycle, 2 jeepneys, a boat and a motorbike later, I arrive at Polaris Resort, Cabilao. The journey wasn't as bad as it sounds as each trip was quite short and there was hardly any waiting time between each - though I must say that riding on the back of a motorbike with a 15kg rucksack over rough tracks was a little scary.
The resort is set on the beach with lovely gardens and a pool and I stay in a tree house - almost like the ones you would picture as a kid but quite solid and with it's own bathroom. There is diving all around the island but most of the dives, are a mere 5 minutes boat ride from the resort.
I have seen my first pygmy seahorses - a seahorse no bigger than your little finger nail - I saw a purple one, a pregnant one, a yellow one and an orange one. I have seen 3 huge yellow frog fish, sea grass pipefish, ornate ghost pipefish, numerous nudibranchs, crabs and shrimp that look so much like the thing they are living on that it is almost unbelievable - they only give themselves away by moving. For my first dive I had been in the water for 60 minutes before I even started to wonder how long we would dive for - 80 minutes later and we were getting back on the boat - for non divers 80 minutes is a very long dive - and at 27c I wasn't even feeling cold after 80 minutes which is pretty unusual. The diving continued in this way, with lovely walls that stretched to depths beyond vision but the tops being in only 3-6 meters allowing for longer dives. There was such a big variety of critters that you just knew you would find something different or new on each dive - my kind of diving!
The resort is set on the beach with lovely gardens and a pool and I stay in a tree house - almost like the ones you would picture as a kid but quite solid and with it's own bathroom. There is diving all around the island but most of the dives, are a mere 5 minutes boat ride from the resort.
I have seen my first pygmy seahorses - a seahorse no bigger than your little finger nail - I saw a purple one, a pregnant one, a yellow one and an orange one. I have seen 3 huge yellow frog fish, sea grass pipefish, ornate ghost pipefish, numerous nudibranchs, crabs and shrimp that look so much like the thing they are living on that it is almost unbelievable - they only give themselves away by moving. For my first dive I had been in the water for 60 minutes before I even started to wonder how long we would dive for - 80 minutes later and we were getting back on the boat - for non divers 80 minutes is a very long dive - and at 27c I wasn't even feeling cold after 80 minutes which is pretty unusual. The diving continued in this way, with lovely walls that stretched to depths beyond vision but the tops being in only 3-6 meters allowing for longer dives. There was such a big variety of critters that you just knew you would find something different or new on each dive - my kind of diving!
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