Philippines Archives - 4corners7seas

Scuba Diving in Cebu & Bohol

Beach sunset on Bohol

I have to be honest and say the Philippines wasn’t the most enjoyable bit of travelling I’ve ever done – true to form I insisted on doing everything overland, but the convoluted geography, weak infrastructure, and poor public transport made it tough going. I was also travelling alone at the time, so had no-one to laugh it all off with; in short, I got my ass kicked for a month (the stinky fish bus story illustrates what it was like)

Snorkelling with whale sharks in Donsol, Philippines

The absolute highlight, though, was the diving & snorkelling, which was outstanding. I certainly didn’t make the most thorough exploration possible, but I stayed & dived in Alona Beach (Panglao Island, Bohol) & Panagsama Beach (Moalboal, Cebu), and went snorkelling with whale sharks in Donsol.

All the dives I did were good, with the standouts being Pescador Island off Moalboal (most turtles I’ve ever seen on a single dive), huge balls of schooling jackfish off Bohol like in the above video (such a surreal experience to be surrounded by them), and a drift wall dive in Bohol during which hunting tuna kept darting in from the outlying blue void like quicksilver missiles to snatch prey from the wall before shooting away again just as quickly, the sunlight playing in rainbows on their shimmering scales; truly a magnificent sight.

(While I’m on the subject of tuna, my once quite high tuna consumption has since been cut right down. Marvellous creatures, and while we don’t necessarily have to stop eating them completely we do need to eat them a lot less if they’re to survive – I know that most people basically don’t give it any thought (or just don’t give a shit), so I figure I’ll cut out more than my fair share to make up for someone else who doesn’t. Diving has certainly made me more aware of the mess our oceans are in and the unsustainable pressures on many fish species. If you do give a shit about marine conservation, see here for more on sustainable seafood)

Another place I didn’t make it to, but probably should have, is Malapascua at the northern tip of Cebu. There you can dive with the magnificent thresher sharks which are there on a daily basis – looks and sounds amazing:

Also, while it isn’t scuba diving, snorkelling with whale sharks is likely to be on the list for most divers (and many non-divers) visiting the Philippines. I did it in Donsol, and it was as awesome as I’d imagined it would be – the more convenient alternative is Oslob, but there are some serious conservation issues there. See here for more on snorkelling with whale sharks.

Have you dived in the Philippines? How was it? Leave a comment below!

For more scuba see here, and see my main Philippines page here

Search for accommodation in Cebu City, Moalboal, Malapscua, and Panglao

Make sure you’re covered for diving – World Nomads is my go-to for travel insurance, check out their scuba cover here

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Overland Adventures: the stinky Filipino fish bus

Overland travel, Philippines, Southeast Asia, Travel tales

Naked children leapt from the ramshackle pier in the tropical downpour, laughing and screaming as lightning flickered across the edges of a sky as threatening as any I’ve yet seen.

“That boat?” I asked hopefully, indicating the larger and (slightly) more seaworthy-looking of the two pieces of junk lashed to the pier.

“No, the other one,” he replied, pointing at the crappy little outrigger.

“Seriously? Five hours in that? Going across that?!” I said, pointing out over the ominous waters. This did not look like a good idea…

Snorkelling with whale sharks in Donsol, Philippines — Snorkelling with whale sharks in Donsol

A couple of days earlier I’d been snorkelling with whale sharks in Donsol (an amazing experience) and was now trying to get to Boracay; the most direct route was a short ferry from Pilar (near Donsol) over to Masbate City on Masbate Island (one of the more nondescript towns I’ve ever been stuck in overnight), then a 5-hour ferry crossing from Balud on the far side of Masbate over to Panay Island, and finally a bus to Boracay. Not exactly direct, but such is the nature of overland travel in the sprawling archipelago that is the Philippines.

But when I’d heard there was a ferry from Masbate over to Panay, I’d imagined something more like, well, an actual ferry. While this little thing looked fine for a calm crossing in clear weather, I definitely wouldn’t want to be caught two hours out in open water in a tropical squall in a boat like that. Looked like a recipe for disaster to me, and sadly the Philippines is anything but a stranger to boat disasters.

He assured me it was fine, but it was rainy season and the majority of my days in the Philippines up to that point had seen biblical rainfall and dramatic lightning displays flashing across roiling purple skies.

“How’s the weather looking tomorrow mate?” I asked, the answer coming in the form of a shrug.

By now a curious crowd had gathered around where we were standing in the shelter of a kind of bandstand at the start of the pier, the rain forming walls of water where it sluiced off the edges of the roof.

“Ok,” I continued, “so where’s your friend’s hotel again?”

A row of jeepneys at the bus station in Legazpi — A row of jeepneys, one of the main transport options in the Philippines

I always prefer to travel overland (or sea) when feasible, but when doing so you sometimes have to have a rethink. If there are 80 people cramming into a 30-seat bus, or your bus driver looks drunk, don’t get on the bus; if the ferry seems dangerously overcrowded and doesn’t have any lifeboats, or the boat doesn’t look seaworthy and it’s sailing out into storms, don’t get on the boat. I figured this might be time for such a judgement call, but also that I might as well stay the night and make the call in the morning after seeing the sea and the sky. And anyway I didn’t really want to have done the 2-hour van ride over from Masbate City only to go straight back (pretty though the scenery had been), so I figured I’d check into this guy’s friend’s hotel and sleep on it.

He pointed out one of the concrete blocks lined up along the road. It would be grim, for sure, but it’d suffice for the night before catching the boat first thing the next day or heading back to Masbate.

No way I was walking out through that waterfall though, so I figured I’d stay dry and wait it out here with my new friend and our audience. It’s always fun interacting with the locals in seldom-visited little corners of a country like this.

Except it isn’t. Not always. Sometimes instead of friendliness there’s a dodgy feeling, something vaguely threatening, or even in-your-face hostility, and it doesn’t help when it’s happening in a language you don’t understand.

One of the crowd of onlookers had pushed his way through to the front, and now appeared to be berating me in Tagalog (at least I guess it was Tagalog, though it could’ve been one of the other myriad languages spoken around the Philippines).

He appeared to be either the village drunk or the village idiot, perhaps both (he certainly smelled of something potent), and he appeared to be very angry about something. I had no idea what he was yelling at me, but the guy I’d been speaking to then engaged him in a bout of verbal jousting.

They took turns to make digs at each other, half addressing one another and half addressing me, and definitely playing it up for the crowd who sporadically burst into raucous laughter and occasional jeers.

I had no idea if I was the butt of the joke, or if the one guy was standing up for me and taking the piss out of the other guy, or if they were publicly discussing the best way to spend my money and dispose of my body, or if they were arguing about nothing whatsoever to do with me. No idea. But I did know that the situation felt dodgy, and the drunk guy was definitely taking an aggressive posture toward me. Even if they were just goading and baiting that guy for fun and nothing to do with me, that still constituted a shitty situation in my book – sheltering from the rain with an agitated crowd, waiting to head to a shithole hotel in order to catch a piece of sea junk in the morning for 5 hours through potential thunderstorms.

“Ok fuck this, I’m bailing,” I thought to myself, and shouldering my pack I interjected into the argument to thank the guy for his help and walked off through the thumb-sized raindrops towards the bus stop.

I was drenched to the bone in an instant, but I ignored the calls from behind and hurried through the rain to hopefully catch a same-day bus back where I’d come from.

Of course, as soon as I reached the bus stop 5 minutes later the rain stopped and the fierce tropical sun re-emerged to begin the process of baking everything dry (everything except my stuff, anyway). But whatever, I was at least glad to find a minivan waiting to fill up for the trip back across the island. He already had a couple of passengers, so with me joining them we’d just need to wait for a few more.

I knew it might take a while so grabbed some coffee and lunch from the little store there, however before I’d even finished my coffee the van filled up – but not with people. No, we were sharing the space with several boxes of fresh fish, which were stacked on top of each other in the back with my bag on top of them. I tried to get both bags on my lap but only had room for the small one, and my fellow passengers had their own shit on their own laps. And there was no roof rack to tie it up top, and no floor space available. So up it went on top of all the cold dead fishes with all their empty staring eyes, and so it was that I ended up right back where I’d started, damp and sweaty and stinking of raw fish, checking back in to the same hotel I’d checked out of some seven hours earlier. I was not a happy camper, and I smelled like a rotten fishmonger for days.

The following night I sailed out of Masbate City on the overnight ferry down to Cebu, where I did some (outstanding) diving before finally making it back up to Boracay the long way around. That then gave me a big old backtrack to Cebu City again, but I never regretted not getting on that flimsy boat – it just didn’t feel right, and I had plenty of time to find another route. Things don’t always go according to plan when you insist on going overland, and changing things up on the fly is part & parcel of the game. This is especially true in places with challenging geography and poor infrastructure like the Philippines – but although it wasn’t all fun at the time, it is all part of the fun.

Whale Shark Snorkelling in Donsol, Philippines

Philippines, Southeast Asia, Wildlife

“There, there!” he kept shouting, “go straight, go straight!”

I kicked on through the murky water, peering through my goggles into the plankton-deepened gloom before me but seeing nothing.

“Where, where?” I yelled to the spotter on the boat, surfacing and looking back to shout, “I can’t see it!”

“Now, now, swim!” he cried, pointing, and I turned and popped my head back under just in time to see the gloom coalescing into an absolutely enormous dark shape coming right at me…

“Fuuuuuuuck,” I remember hearing myself shout through my snorkel, scrambling to get out of this leviathan’s way before it bulldozed me.

I then marvelled, breathless, at its beautiful spotted flank and fins as it passed, eyes boggling at the insane size of the thing. This was a full-grown adult male, some 12 metres in length, and due to the visibility only being a few metres that day I couldn’t see the whole shark at the same time. First the enormous mouth and eyes came past, then that view of his flank and fins, and finally the tail fin (itself double my height) pushed past with enough force to actually shunt me to the side.

Absolutely breathtaking. Stunning. And thoroughly, utterly humbling. Superlatives aren’t enough.

(I just wish I’d managed to get better pictures – the 3 on this page are the only remotely decent ones from the whole film!)

Snorkelling with whale sharks was hands down the highlight, followed by the excellent diving, of my (not always entirely enjoyable) month travelling solo around the Philippines. The word awesome is as overused as any in the dictionary, but swimming alongside those gentle giants, being so completely dwarfed by another living creature, really is an awesome, awe-inspiring experience.

I did so in Donsol, which at the time was the only place in the Philippines you could reliably do it – and only from March to May, when the whale sharks’ natural migratory patterns bring them to Donsol’s plankton-rich waters to feed.

Since becoming famed for the chance to swim with whale sharks (or butanding as they’re known locally), sleepy little Donsol has reinvented itself as an eco-tourism hub. The activity isn’t only a way for visitors to check an item off the bucket list and for locals to make some money – it’s also a very well run conservation project, with the welfare of the sharks given utmost importance. Before going out on your boat tour, you’re given a briefing and watch a video explaining all the rules governing your interaction with the sharks e.g. they have a 1-boat 1-shark policy, meaning that if there are 6 boats out there, once a boat finds a shark the other 5 boats have to hang back and wait their turn before their own passengers get to jump in (this rule isn’t 100% followed to be honest, but the others are). We were the first group out on the water that day, having registered the previous evening and then getting there nice & early in the morning which meant we were placed with the most experienced crew and were the first boat out – it paid off, as we were first to the majority of sharks encountered that morning (it was a bumper morning too, with half a dozen sharks spotted). If you stay walking-distance from the centre it makes it easy to stroll over in the evening and get the registration done (see below for accommodation).

More importantly, though, the very existence of the snorkelling project helps protect the sharks from being fished. Sharks worldwide are under pressure from the finning trade, their fins prized as the key ingredient for shark fin soup – a popular delicacy at Chinese banquets, wedding receptions in particular. The practice involves removing a shark’s fins before throwing it back in the sea to die – the fins are by far the most valuable parts, and a fishing boat can carry a shitload more fins by discarding the rest of the carcasses at sea.

Of course it makes sense to the boat owners to do this, in terms of maximizing their profits; but what a cruel death, and what a deplorable waste. The sheer size of whale sharks and their fins make them a prime target, of course, and the rest of their huge bodies are dropped to the bottom. Brutal.

While there is increasing awareness of conservation in China and a growing movement to ban finning spearheaded by WildAid, China’s huge population and new-found wealth means demand for fins will continue for years to come; furthermore, it’s also a common menu item at Chinese restaurants in various other countries such as Thailand and Malaysia. The whale shark is now listed as endangered, with global numbers estimated to have halved in the last 75 years.

So sharks need all the help they can get, and if fishermen can be persuaded it makes more sense profit-wise to conserve them than it does to dismember them, it makes a real difference. By going snorkelling in Donsol, you’re helping to do that.

Donsol or Oslob?

As mentioned above, when I went to the Philippines the only place to snorkel with whale sharks was Donsol (unless you happened to get very lucky elsewhere); but in recent years another town started offering a rival whale shark experience. This town is Oslob, and its location on Cebu Island makes it easier to get to than Donsol (relative to most visitor itineraries); it also offers whale shark snorkelling year-round, rather than for a limited season. However, this is achieved by actively feeding the sharks to attract them to and keep them in the area. This both disturbs their natural migratory patterns, and causes them to see human boats as sources of food – which could lead to them approaching fishing boats. Furthermore, the sharks around Oslob have sustained boat propeller injuries due to the lack of consideration for their well being. In other words, whereas Donsol runs a proper conservation scheme, Oslob really is just locals cashing in on bucketlist backpackers without a care for the sharks themselves. While this is still clearly better than killing them for their fins, if you actually give a shit about the sharks I reckon you should support the good work being done at Donsol instead, even though it may mean going way out of your way. I wouldn’t want the people of Oslob to lose their living standards or start fishing the whale sharks, but hopefully if enough people vote with their feet Oslob will eventually adopt the better practices followed at Donsol.

If you really can’t get to Donsol, or you’re there in the wrong season, you’ll have to make the call on Oslob. Personally I wouldn’t go – in fact I intentionally timed my visit to the Philippines to be there in the right season for Donsol, and that’s what I implore you to do if you can (or alternatively, if you’re heading on to Australia aim to do it at Ningaloo Reef in Exmouth, Western Australia, where the season is longer and runs from March to August)

Where to Stay in Donsol

The whale shark snorkelling centre is a little out of town (to the north), and there’s a string of accommodation options along the stretch of coast there. These are more expensive than the places in the town itself, but are nicer and mean you’re just a short walk from the centre – and as noted above, the earlier you get there and register in the morning, the better the crew you get and the better your chances of more quality shark interactions (if you’re on a tighter budget, you can reduce expenses by staying in town and taking a tuk tuk to the centre – make sure to get there early though). We stayed at Amor Farm Beach Resort which was a 5-minute walk from the centre, run by a friendly family, and nothing special accommodation-wise but a nice enough place to hang out over food & beers in the evenings. For other options in Donsol see here

View of Mayon Volcano from Legazpi — View of Mayon Volcano from the bus station in Legazpi (the white van took us to Donsol)

How to Get to Donsol

Donsol’s a 90-minute minivan ride from Legazpi city, which is a 1-hour flight or a gruelling 14-hour bus ride from Manila (search & book transportation options here), or a 1-hour flight from Cebu City. I took an early bus from Manila and stayed overnight in Legazpi, then continued to Donsol in the morning with a British couple I met at the hotel, and we signed up for whale shark snorkelling the following morning.

(Oslob is on the island of Cebu, around 3 hours south of Cebu city)

Have you been snorkelling with whale sharks in Donsol (or Oslob)? How was it? Any questions? Give me a shout below and I’ll get back to you.

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