A personal post today, I'm officially back into my routine now after coming home last week from almost 3 weeks in the Philippines and thought it would be nice to show you a little bit of what we got up to. So if you didn't know already, I just love scuba diving! My husband taught me on our first holiday together and that's what our holidays have been centred around ever since.
So a plane to Manila, a night's stay then another flight, a car and a boat and we arrived at our first destination in Cebu - a teeny island called Malapascua.
This is one of the reasons we chose the Philippines as this island is one of the best places to see Thresher sharks (they aren't dangerous before you conjure a jaws type image in your head!). We got up around 4:30am, headed to the dive centre and were on the boat at 5am heading out to the dive site. Now I'm really not a morning person but it was around 25 degrees already and being able to watch the sunrise on the boat made the lack of sleep worth it.
We didn't do anything else on Malapascua apart from dive, eat and have some cocktails! It was a great place to stay but if you weren't a diver then I don't think you'd need to stay there for more than a couple of days.
Ideally we wanted to go to 3 different places but getting about in the Philippines is really arduous! You should estimate to lose an entire day of travelling to go to each destination, so we just decided to do longer in 2 places as this was going to be our only holiday this year and we didn't want to be exhausted when we got home.
Next stop was a small town called Moal Boal, just on the south east side of Cebu. It was a 6 hour drive (and this was a private transfer) so a coach would have been a good few hours longer.
We decided on this place as there were no extra flights involved and you can do inland activities such as waterfalls and hikes as well as diving.
We decided to do a canyoning trip one of the days which was so much fun. You go with a local guide to the where the waterfalls start and follow the river down to the final falls, it was hard work but amazing! We got up to go at 6am which I would advise as it gets so warm and you have to walk half an hour to get to the start of the falls. Then you follow the water through the caves, with quite a few jumps too! I not really scared of heights but I was still pretty apprehensive I will admit, but it was exhilarating at the same time. And I got some of my favourite pictures ever so its definitely worth it.
Most people go to Moal Boal to dive with a huge shoal of sardines that stay just offshore. You can snorkel with them too but you get a much better sense of just how big the shoal is if you dive, and it was amazing, I've never seen so many fish!
It had lovely reef diving as well, I was a bit surprised as to how healthy the coral was. The colours were so vibrant and there was a large amount of fish still, as well as plenty of sea turtles and a bonus of dolphin spotting from the boat in the mornings.
So all in all the Philippines is a stunning country and I only wish I had more time to explore more of it! Great diving, great weather and lovely people, it's definitely on my list of places to come back too and I would highly recommend it, don't let the long flight put you off!