Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Moalboal Diving Trip

On the Island of Cebu
The Dolphin House Resort
April 25-28, 2014

When we found out that we could dive with thousands of sardines, we were definitely in.  We did a little research, found a place to stay, and booked our plane tickets.  Cebu Pacific really is a great airline with which to fly.  The flight was right at one hour, so it seemed once we were up in the air, it was time to come back down again.  Both flights going and coming were delayed due to President Obama’s visit to Manila.  On Monday when we landed, we passed right by the Presidential Plane and got off of our plane in plain view.  It really was kind of cool…




The Dolphin House was a great place to stay.  They had a driver waiting for us.  What should have taken one and a half hours took three – the drive through all those little towns takes forever.  Getting behind jeepneys, huge tour buses, bikes, bikes with side cars, scooters, scooters with side cars… you get the picture.  At one point in the ride we had to go over a mountain, pretty curvy.  Our driver had his driving music on, and at the curvy point King of the Mountain came on.  Believe me, he felt like the king of the mountain driving like crazy!  Once we were safely off the mountain, I asked him how often he made that particular drive.  He makes that drive two to three times a day!  I definitely do not have the patience for his job.  I tipped my hat to him…



The resort itself has a rustic feel to it; however, it is beautifully decorated.  When we arrived Edi and I received leis with beautiful, fragrant flowers.  They each had a small gift woven into the reeds.  Edi’s had a free drink voucher, and mine had a beautiful pearl necklace in it.  Our suite had a treehouse feel as the bedroom was upstairs in the loft with the seating area and bathroom downstairs.  We had a gecko friend that greeted us and hung out both inside and outside of our room…





The food was delicious.  The restaurant was open air and every meal we had was beautifully presented and quite nice on our palates.  I think my favorite meal was breakfast as the coffee was divine and the seaside table gave us a fabulous view…  They offered happy hour every day from 5:00-6:00 which is great after a day of diving.  On Sunday, during happy hour they had an informational seminar about crabs.  All of the dive masters were there and we just hung out with our cervezas, learning about crabs, and having good, fun conversation.  We had a side seminar about trigger fish as the dive master had to save me from getting attacked by one on our dive.  It turns out it is nesting season for the trigger fish, and they get quite territorial.  The particular fish that came after me got the dive master instead.  He had quite the bite mark in his fin!








All of this brings me to the diving.  The set up at the resort is convenient.  The boats make it easy to get out and in, and the dive masters are knowledgeable and approachable.  Our sardine dive was incredible!  I felt like I needed to be listening to Enya on this dive!  We also did an airplane wreck which was a lot of fun.  On both of these dives we saw two turtles – eating, swimming – it was awesome!  Our last dive was a shore dive on the house reef- we saw two turtles on this dive, as well!  It too was a beautiful dive.  The only thing is we should have gone diving at high tide instead of low tide.  We had to walk out in the water on this cement pathway until we could actually float in the water and put on our fins.  When we got back from the dive, the tide had gone down even more, and we couldn’t get to the pathway.  Thank heavens for fin booties!









It was a great weekend trip, and we had a great time.  Now, we just need to plan our next tropical destination J

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