4 boats and bioluminescence Another travel day ;) - we relaxed in our tiny hotel room for a few hours in the morning before heading to the airport. I've been a bit disappointed with the lack of Pinoy coffee so far, but having read again it seems like the coffee region is in the south of the country (advised against travelling to here at the moment). Seeing an Illy sign at the airport was rather pleasing. Also my Italian counterpart suggested pizza, which I g...

Buko Pandan I've really enjoyed the time we have spent in Malapascua, the surroundings are incredible and there seems to be less people than a normal resort. I don't like overcrowding and that was part of the choice for missing out Boracay, another destination in the Visayas that's very popular with tourists. I would certainly recommend it to anyone, even if you don't want to dive you can quietly sun yourself without a care in the world. Also I've managed to fig...

Reverse Neil Armstrong We ventured down for diving at 09:30 and were told to gear up so we could go on our first two open water dives. Even though I knew we had been gearing up to this, I didn't think we would be trusted to go out properly. So we grabbed our stuff, and got on the little boat to get to the bigger boat (I'm slightly disappointed if we just get on a single boat and go these days) and headed 10 minutes to Los Bamboos 1. I think to say I was nervou...

Face Mask Abort Diving day two, we headed back out to the bay where our imaginary confined pool was to practise my failed skills from the day before, I finally grasped clearing my mask and recovering my air supply, Hoorah! We also swam a bit deeper to look at some fish (they were pleased to see me too). After lunch we headed back outside the hotel to try buoyancy control, which seemed ok and taking off our face masks under water, putting them back on and clear...

Andy Brain Doesn't Compute We were ready at 9:30 and met Tata and went through some assessment questions before learning how to setup our equipment. This wasn't too bad, I'm quite good at jigsaw puzzles as long as it's not a tent I've never seen before! A little boat was ready to take us 500m to the bay which we arrived in to practise our confined dive skills. The videos we watched showed this part to be in a swimming pool so being out in the elements was the...