Wallpaper April

Travels, Wallpapers

For this month’s wallpaper I chose one of my favourite sunsets. This one was taken on Pandan Island, close to Mindoro island in the Philippines. Diving is great there as you can organise trips to Apo reef.

Golden colours

Click here to get your favourite size

Northern Sulawesi – Part One

diving, Travels, underwater

it has been a week since we arrived at Cocotinos, a lovely dive resort in the Manado area on Northern Sulawesi. After the huge wave of SMS’s and mails we got concerning the earthquake, peace came back to our daily schedule. In fact none of us noticed the quake on Sunday night. After a great breakfast in the morning we left for a 3 tank day dive. I have been to Bunaken before but have never dived the “mainland” dive sites around Manado. So it really came as a surprise to me to find critters such as BRO, Ambon scorpion fish and pontohi seahorses, only to name a few.

Pontohi seahorse

orange eyed mantis

On Wednesday we went on an extended day trip to the Bangka area and paradise pier. That meant wide angle shots. Huge seafans and schooling yellow snappers welcomed us on our first dive. Taking pictures can be tricky as currents might get strong…

Colourful reef

schooling around

Paradise jetty is located at Paradise Resort a huge ugly (at least to my taste) building which stands in the middle of nowhere, empty, waiting for the new owner to open the place again.

paradise jetty

We definitley have fun

LOL

More to come from Lembeh.

Dark sand, strong currents and the pier

diving, Travels, underwater

Our dive boat slowly got closer to the coast. We were travelling for a couple of hours already from busy Alona beach towards Dauin, a sleepy town on Negros Island. I only remembered this place as a convenient departure point to famous Apo Island which I had the pleasure to visit a couple of years ago. Eleven more couple of eyes were looking at the dark sandy beach and its huge palm trees. It was our last stop on our Visayan diving trip. Would the place meet the expectations of all?

Beach in front of the resort

After a refreshing welcome drink served by a smiling young lady we checked in our garden bungalows. No a/c, but a huge fan and a wonderful terrace. The bungalows were great and everyone liked them

Garden bungalow Pura Vida Resort

Some of us went on a late afternoon dive on the house reef, which happens to be a protected area called “Luca Sanctuary”. The place was renamed soon after by my friend Cath who thought “Alice in Wonderland” was more suitable. How to explain this dive? We entered the water in front of the resort. The dive starts on a sandy slope where we encountered the first residents : a hairy frog fish, some cuttlefish and robust ghost pipe fish. It couldn’t have started better. Then from one moment to the other we came to the coral reef…colours exploded in front of our eyes in the middle of this dark sandy spot and fish were all around. Sometimes I had problems to figure out my buddies through the compact fish walls. Upon that we met a turtle having its dinner and a nice sea snake. We hid behind the coral rocks to take a rest from the strong currents and watched the party. It was unbelievable. As we exited the water and the rest of our group asked about the dive we saw in their incredulous eyes that this dive couldn’t be explained with words…

cuttlefish on Luca Sanctuary

couple of ghost pipefish

Luca fish bowl

Strong currents were always around as we were diving during full moon. Night dives were amazing with such a variety of critters around.

praying crab

digging

All these strange bebaviours were amazing to watch.

tiny, tiny

eye to eye with a skeleton shrimp

Then came Apo. Known for its strong drift dives and amazing schools of jacks. The coral reef is in a gorgeous state as the area is one of the most protected in the area.

giant frog fish

There was still this pier on top of our list. Everybody who has dived it told me : You have to dive it. It’s a must! So we organised 2 dives for our group at the DuCoMi Pier. From the topside, nothing appealing really. Huge ugly boats and lots of noise. After the briefing we jumped in the water. What a show! I’ve never seen so many different nudibranch on a single dive. Every leg of the pier hid its own residents : seahorses, froggies, lionfish just to name a few. If you were able to focus from macro to wide angle you noticed the sunrays bursting through the water and the pier legs.