El Nido

Above:  Big spacious diving bangka.

I did two dives in El Nido, with the Submariner Diving Centre.  They were pleasure to deal from the very beginning, when we walked into the dive shop he evening before we wanted to go diving.  They had done all their planning for boat and staff allocation. As we had a party of six, they would have to rejig things. The boss Ronny and his team were most obliging in accommodating us.

Next morning, we were tendered to the large diving Bangka which was spacious and equipped with its own compressor, kitchen and cook (who made a really nice lunch).  The dive gear were all nice and in good condition.  And the divers comprised of fun divers, refreshers, Advanced course student, an instructor on holiday.

With so many types of divers, organisation appeared a little haphazard.  And due to the layout of the boat, we had to enter the water one-by-one using the great stride forward rather than the simultaneous backroll.

Sadly, things underwater weren’t in my favour:

• My first dive at Helicopter Island was pretty crap. Visibility was poor at around 10m due to plankton. Plankton is fine if it brings in the only resident whale-shark but that wasn’t mean to be. There wasn’t very much fish; all were pretty standard small stuff. There was some nice hard coral but it was hard to enjoy in the poor light (due to shadow of the cliff-like islands) and the plankton.
• The second dive at Taglugaban was similar except that there was a very good maze-like rock formation and a bit more fish.

It felt like a total waste of time and money, perhaps because I’ve been so spoilt by three whole days of diving at Sipadan only recently.  Incidentally, the water was surprisingly cold; I always thought Philippines was tropical!