Sabang, Philippines

by Tim Digger

We went to Sabang Beach, Puerto Galera in Jan 2003, Garden of Eden Resort, Cocktail Divers, with Wet Expeditions, for 2 weeks. Basic cost was £999 flights, accommodation and diving. Food is cheap and alcohol even cheaper. Malaria prophylaxis not required though some repellent is useful. Flights were with Air France from Birmingham (convenient to us) via CDG Paris this was the shortest travel time we could find and worked very well except for the security at CDG on the way back not allowing my dive torch as hand baggage (don't know why it was OK on the way out), in spite of that Air France got it on to the flight in the hold and it arrived with the rest at Birmingham. Travel time was 1930 at Birmingham arriving about 2000 next day and 9 hours earlier then 4 hour minibus and an hour on the boat over to Mindoro getting to resort about midnight for a couple of beers and bed.

This is a very pleasant resort with a narrow beach front with the single or double cabins running back about 100m and up the tree-covered steep slope behind. The gardens are well stocked and tended, with orchids and bougainvillea everywhere. The bar has a friendly white cockatoo and a slightly aggressive monkey who tends not to like women.
The outfit runs up to 4 small hard boats with outboards (large RIB sized but with moveable ladders to get out) and a 10m inboard speed boat. There is a large well fitted-out storage and preparation area about 20m from the beach and 10m from the bar restaurant.

The whole set up is very efficiently run with up to 10 divers per boat (but usually 5-8) 3 dives a day and drive times to dive sites of 5-20 minutes. All boat dives are accompanied but once you are known to be OK you can drift where you like on most dives. All ascents are marked by a delayed SMB (this is essential as boat traffic is fairly heavy in some areas) either yourself or the dive guide. It is well worth sticking with the guides on some dives as they have previously searched out some of the more camouflaged life forms, some of which, such as pygmy seahorses take some spotting. Night dives and day trips are extra.

The variety of life in this area is amazing, especially hard and soft corals and anemones. While there are not the sheer numbers of fish seen on a good Red Sea reef the variety is greater, there is little big stuff (largest seen was a 2m nurse shark and the regular 3-4 reef sharks in a cave at 25m ) but we saw several different species of Moray and a wide variety of scorpion fish and other bottom dwellers such as rays and sea horses. Frogfish of different species are in the bay and we found them in consistent locations after first being shown them. Loads of nudibranchs of many different species.

We started diving on 24th Jan and stopped 12 days and 34 dives later on 6 Feb, we took a day off in the middle and went inland on a trip to a local beauty spot where lunch is organised and then canoed back down the river (watch out for water buffalo). This was a good day out especially as Cocktail divers don't do Nitrox. Others in the bay do and do Tec dive training but we didn't do any of this.

Best Dives.
Hot Springs. Vis. 15m An area of under sea volcanic activity south of Verde Island (Day Trip). This is dived as a drift down on to the area which lies in 20-25m inside a shallow crater area about 50m across the bottom here is bubbling with escaping gas and the gravel bottom is hot if you dig only a few inches down, and a heat shimmer can be seen over several cracks. We saw several nudibranchs not seen elsewhere here. The dive finishes back into the current and hanging on DSMBs. I was then sea sick between dives and unable to do second dive but even so a very good dive. The day trips are extra but include the beach barbecue and basically good value and fun.

The Canyons reviewed in Diver, a good dive that can be hard in tidal conditions, we did it at slack twice, some very nice large sweetlips.
Loads of other good dives especially if you like macro photography and small wild life. Don't forget the Nudibranchs. Vis never outstanding, usually10-20m never more, occasionally less than 10m.

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