By Rachel Hyde
Photos by Terry Booth & Charlene Kwan
An early start complete with the delights of a “golden
arches” breakfast saw us heading 2.5 hours to the south of the sprawling
metropolis that is Manila, to Anilao in late July.
Having witnessed the devastation wrought across Manila and
the southern areas of Luzon by typhoon Rammasun only one week before, we were unsure of the impact on the dive
sites at Anilao. Sure enough, upon our arrival at Planet Dive they confirmed
that almost the entire house reef had been wiped out. Fortunately however, the
dive gods were smiling down upon us and Secret Bay, and we were, nevertheless,
in for some excellent diving.
Dive one was an embarrassingly
short 47 minutes for some due to
some over enthusiastic Dutch lungs, but we still managed to get a good look at
a huge variety of macro critters including shrimps, nudis and frog fish.
Dive Two was a
stunning reef dive, again with macro critters galore but this time with a rich
diversity of fish life, as well some seriously beautiful corals. Even a turtle
popped by to visit.
The descent on our third dive was unspectacular to say the
least, especially after the sensory overload of the glorious corals on the
previous dive. I have to say that looking down onto an almost completely bare,
sandy bottom with the odd tuft of sea grass waving in the gentle current
lowered my expectations of this dive considerably. But how wrong I was. Every
inch of this sandy bottom was teeming with sea life to delight even the biggest
skeptic (i.e. me 30 seconds previously). Tiny frog fish, seahorses, skeleton
shrimp, hairy crabs, Orangutan crabs, nudibranchs, jaw fish, ribbon eels, boxer
crabs – every patch of sand contained yet another delight. Very tempting indeed
to dive until the air ran out…
Anilao is convenient to Manila, very reasonably price and
most of all, offers some spectacular and seriously interesting diving.
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