BOHOL, PHILIPPINES

Welcome back, welcome back! How’re we feeling today? Ready to embark on another adventure into the deep blue? I sure hope so! If you are coming into this post & seeing that big ole ‘part two’ across the title & scratching your head, fear not, I’ll link Part One of this here trilogy below this here paragraph. If you’re coming from the previous post, welcome to it! Glad you stuck around! Sorry we didn’t get into any diving with that one, I promise this one will be different in that regard. Now, if we don’t have any more points of business to get out of the way, I’d be happy to continue this ongoing story. Strap on your BCD, bite down on your reg, & let’s dive on in!

Part One

PART TWO:

Day Three

One of the only times that you will catch me being a morning person is on the days in which there is diving or some sort of other adventure involved. I tend to be more of a late morning riser & a night owl than an early bird but when you dive, a lot of times your dives will start sometime around or before 8 AM. That was no different here.

We awoke around 6:15/6:30 AM. Having made our way to the resort in the dark I wanted to a brief bit of exploring. I revisited the path I’d gone down the night prior; a pair of jet black honey bees were zipping around, pollenating a papaya tree that had cropped up near the trail. Continuing along it I sat & watched the newly minted day from the overlook above the rocks, listening to the waves dash against them.

Breakfast at Magic Oceans begins around that time & is custom, made to order, from the menu provided at the table. Along with your freshly made breakfast options you also have the ability to order coffee, tea, water, or an assortment of fresh juices such as apple, mango, orange, & pineapple. I tend to lean something a little more carb leaning, less greasy or dense, for days I plan to dive, especially if we’re going out on a boat. It was a tip that Elaine taught me back in Fiji that helps mitigate the potential of “feeding the fish” should the boat ride out, or the currents under the waves, prove to be rocky. With that in mind I ordered the Pancake with Fresh Fruit.

The plate sized pancake was less your traditional southern/midwestern American dense dark golden brown disk & more akin to a thick crepe or a dutch baby. Whatever it was, it was delicious. It came covered in fresh pineapple, some of the best mango I've ever had, & bananas. It felt sacrilegious of me to put syrup on it, so instead I asked for honey, which I drizzled gingerly atop.

With breakfast also came the remainder of our briefing from the night before that had been cut short by the exhaustion we all shared. Evelyn filled us in on the remainder of the resort proceedings while Jamie, the Dive Master, began briefing us on what our days of dive would consist of. We were to be at the ‘dive shop’ each morning at 8 AM for check-in & briefing where we’d pack up & depart for two morning dives before returning back for lunch, refueling, & going out for our afternoon dive.

As we all began finishing our respective breakfasts & departing for our rooms to gather our belonging for our dives we were once again greeted by the dining staff who were taking out lunch orders.

With lunch you had the option for whatever you wanted from the even broader lunch menu. However, each day the kitchen staff would pick two items from the menu that they would then offer to guests as a way of making the load on the kitchen for lunch easier. If neither of those two options suited you then you were more than welcome to order from the menu.

Once we’d all retreated & reconvened down at the dive shop we set about setting up out tanks for the week. Each of us was given a polished wood station with room to hang your BCD (buoyancy control device), your wetsuit, & a milk crate in which to put things whenever you needed them. As I was getting situated, JR, who would be my guide for the week, came over & metered the nitrox from my tank for me. You meter with each tank so that you know what percentage O2 your tank has which then is inputted into your dive computer which uses the exact measurements to calculate a dive requiring no decompression time. We finish measuring my tank, attached it to the BCD, & screwed on my regulator, then it was Evan’s turn.

This is where I think we ran into the trouble of the week, the trouble that we probably won’t include in this part of the blog, but will probably occupy the majority of part three. We got Evan’s tank measurements, signed off on them on the sheet saying we’d measured & crosschecked the tank, & went to assemble his dive kit. We screw the BCD in place & I go to attend to something in my milk crate. The next thing I know there’s a loud pop from my left & a whooshing. Those of us who are experience divers have already called it; it was a popped o-ring. An o-ring, for anyone not familiar with plumbing or any type of activity involving the sealing of two connecting points, is a little rubber ring that sits in the connection fro the tank to the regulator. It prevents air from leaking out the connection. Evan’s had just blown. Totally normal occurrence, nothing to be frightened by or upset about. They pull his reg off the tank & inspect the issue. I immediately see the problem, there’s not one, but two o-rings in the slot. I call that out & turn my head back to my kit or whatever I was fidgeting with on my kit. Another pop right next to my left ear. The blown o’ring had been discarded & another one had replaced it, which then also blew.

I want to be very clear that I’m not tacking blame on this for anyone, especially since I was basically the only one who could see the second o-ring from where I was positioned & the way the tank was facing. I understand having taken the regulator off, seeing the o-ring attached to said regulator connection, & replacing it there assuming that it was the only one present. I also speak at a pitch that tends to blend in to the background noise of the world around you, so I may not have been heard. I made sure to point the mistake out before the same thing happened a second time though.

With gear finally assembled & loaded on board the boat, we gathered around for our briefing & to be divided into our dive groups.

At this point I suppose it’s worth noting the following. Anytime I write stories or blogs I do my best to not include the names of persons under the age of 18, unless I am personally related to them. I am not their parents/guardians, the extent in which their personage being spread across the world wide web is not my choice to make. There will be several mentions of underage party members throughout this blog series, but I shan’t be naming them. They will simply be referred to as in relation, i.e. so & so’s daughter, such & such’s friend, you get it? If you’re one of the aforementioned reading this, I promise I know your names & don’t mean to diminish you to who you are to someone else! Continuing on…

Evan & I naturally got placed together, along with Deb (whom I adore & dove with previously in Fiji & Indonesia), & Darin & Cari’s Daughter (whom I also adore & dove with in Fiji), as she was rooming with Deb. Cari departed from her assigned group & joined ours under JR as the group she was assigned to with Darin, their son, & his friend, would be busy certifying their son’s friend as a diver. So we became a group of six, JR included, & they became a group of four.

Our boat held three groups, which meant that our last group from our party would be on another boat for the week, but they didn’t seem to mind! At least as far as none of them voiced.

Our first dive of the trip was a site called Birhen Sanctuary. A lot of the diving that we did around the peninsula that Anda sits on were wall dives as the shore went out a ways before dropping off drastically at a depth of around fifteen to twenty feet to around eighty to one hundred. Birhen was no exception. With our max depth for the site set around eighty-five feet we all suited up & into the water we went. I was eager as always to resubmerge & was actually planning on trying out a new bit of tech that I’d acquired, the Oceanic+ Dive Housing which uses the already solid camera output from my iPhone 15 Pro Max as its camera!

The Philippines did not come to play. In terms of an “introductory dive” for the location, it put all of the cards on the table. We got down to depth, immediately a massive field of Garden Eels (if you follow me on any of my socials you know how much love I have for garden eels.) Slight turn back towards the wall, boom, Sea Krait. This was all within the first minute or two of the dive. We saw Regal Angelfish, Ornate Ghost Pipefish, Scorpionfish, Frogfish, & even some Pygmy Seahorses (only about the size of a fingernail) camouflaged & tucked into a Gorgonian Coral. The site was splendid! If offered Greyfaced Moray Eels, harems of Anthias galore, & tons & tons of different varietals of Nudibranchs.

At the top of the wall sat an additional reef where we ran into a Peacock Grouper, a school of Durgon Triggerfish, & a Powder Brown Tang in addition to all the Anemones with Clownfish & a plethora of Long-Spined Sea Urchins.

Returning to the boat we were met with coffee, tea, bananas, & a container full of fresh cut mango. The crew was put in charge of changing out our empty tanks for the next dive & we set about burning through our hour long surface interval.

Any time I do these blogs, specifically the ones involving large amounts of diving, I never know exactly how much or how little you, as the reader, know about the activity of diving. Typically, I feel like most people sit in the realm of knowing very little about dive other than what they’re seen in tv or movies, often which promote very unsafe practices in their frames. BUT with the feeling that most people don’t know much about Scuba & its practices, I tend to overshare about the items or activities in which I am referencing. *See entire paragraph about ‘o-rings’ above.

Surface intervals, for those that don’t know, is the time designated for you as a diver to sit in our natural environment, the surface, & breathe out some of the nitrogen that has accumulated in your system at depth. The deeper you go, the longer you stay, the more pressure forces nitrogen into your body, the longer your surface interval needs to be. One of the goals of recreational diving is to stay within the threshold of what we call “no-deco time” or no decompression time, meaning you don’t require decompression to get back to normal above water stasis. All of these are fun things you learn if you ever take a dive course. During the surface interval is also typically the time in which you move from one dive site to the next, as we did.

Our next dive site was called Seahorse Point, another wall with a bit more sandy & sloped of a bottom. We still had a bit of time left before we could go diving so we sat & watched an outrigger pull up a fish trap full of fish. I swung around the back of the boat to use the bathroom & found Lee Ann, one of the other dive guides, eat something that I’m still not sure of its name with rice. I asked her what it was, which she gave me the name of, which I swiftly forgot, & then she offered me some. I took a pinch of it & it was exquisite! To describe it, it was a savory, salty reddish mush that I could not for the life of me tell you what was in it or what it was called. All I know was that it was very good & I am grateful she allowed me to try her lunch!

It was once again time to suit up & get in the water. The six of us jumped in, descended as a group, & started to make our way over the wall. The current at Seahorse Point was a little stronger than that of the previous dive, but was still manageable. We started this dive headed East, away from our boat. On our first pass, near the base of the wall we found lots more Nudibranchs, Feather Duster & Christmas Tree Worms, & an anemone full of Sarasvati Anemone Shrimp. We’d just made it to the halfway point of our dive & gotten the ‘turn around’ signal from JR when I spotted it. Nestled in the wall, doing its utmost to hide from us, was a rather large Common Octopus. I would have missed it entirely if I hadn’t been waiting for the rest of the group to start their return back the way we came. I only noticed it because of the white flash of its respiratory siphon.

We all gathered around the octopus as it did its best to blend into the reef wall & the cavity that it had claimed to hide in. It’s always an exciting find when you stumble across an octopus or any other type of cephalopod as their alien like appearance never ceases to amaze.

Going back the way we came we stumbled upon another fun find, an Electric Flame Scallop, tucked back in a slight cave, flashing its mantle to attract plankton which it filter feeds out. The scallop isn’t really electric, but it gives the appearance of such as it tucks & untucks the white edge of tissue around the edge of the opening of its mantle. Additionally we ran into more scorpionfish, more frogfish, & even more schools of anthias.

With the morning dives completed, it was time to head back to the resort for lunch.

For lunch Evan & I had chosen the burger option. It was definitely an interesting take on one, a far departure from the American style, but it was still very good. The patty came with your usual lettuce, onion, tomato, mayo, but additionally had fresh cucumbers on it, I’m assuming in place of the pickle. It made for a much “fresher” take on the classic dish.

After lunch it was back to the boat for our afternoon wall dive at Snapper’s Cove.

Snapper’s Cove is aptly name. There is a cove, in the wall, that typically is host to a school of Snapper. Imagine that. Evan skipped out on the afternoon dive & opted to relax by the pool, as did Deb, so our group of six was down to four.

In my experience afternoon dives can be hit or miss. A lot of the stuff that is active in the morning has started to hide away for the approaching night & a lot of the things that are active at night haven’t started to come out to hunt in the darkness yet. This one turned out to be a solid one!

The wall was chockablock with different kinds of nudibranchs as well as soft corals such as Pulsing Xenia & Waving Hand Anthelia. Additionally we didn’t find any snapper, but we did find a whole school of large Cardinalfish. I tried & failed to fulfill my endless pursuit of getting two Yellow Capped Cleaner Wrasse to clean my mouth & we found a massive white Giant Frogfish perched on some sponges awaiting whatever unlucky fish swims too close to it. We stumbled upon a school of juvenile Engineer Gobies, a duo of Zanzibar Whip Coral Shrimp, & some Orangutan Crab nestled in a Bubble Coral.

On top of the reef we ran into another Sea Krait, a few rather large hermit crabs, tons of Leather Corals, another frogfish, & our first Sea Turtle! Evan really missed out.

Back on land Evan & I made our way to the bar. I typically edit & post dive videos while on my trips & it usually takes me the entirety of the evening to do so, but I found myself having technical difficulties. You see, I am used to shooting on my GoPro, which has phenomenal stabilizers but can’t do macro (anything closer than a foot) to save its life. My iPhone, on the other hand, can shoot macro & wide but lacks the stabilizers. So I spend the good part of an hour or so editing footage, trying to figure out how to stabilize it on my iPad, which simply wasn't' happening. I decided that I’d wait til I returned stateside to compile my videos this time around since the stabilizing tech on my computer is absolutely astounding at times! I resigned myself to enjoying my time & not putting the pressure of content creation on myself this trip.

Here we meet more key players for the week; Ester & Ian, both of whom run the bar at the resort. Ester is by far who Evan & I spent the majority of our week conversing with & I would say we left the week decent enough friends! Ester was also in charge of the daily specials, her ‘cocktails of the day’ were always innovative & fun & we all sat at the bar most nights talking about life, movies, & joking around. This was to be the first of those evenings.

Dinner was called at almost exactly 7 PM & was served family style, just as it was the night prior. We were sat with water & a lovely sweet fruit tea along with an appetizer, a soup, or a salad. We ate dinner at a leisurely pace & once we were done it seems we’d all been taken by sleep, as every one in our party immediately went off to bed for the night.

End Of Day Three

Day Four

I woke up Tuesday with the biggest pep in my step, not that I don’t normally when it comes to diving, but today was the day that we were crossing off one of my bucket list dives. We were going to be diving with Whale Sharks!!!

Along with Manta Rays, Whale Sharks have always been a big “I wanna” for my dive bucket list & with over 60 dives under my belt, I had yet to have gotten a chance run in with either of the gentle giants. That was due to change!

Also, quick interjection here. THE ARE SHARKS, NOT WHALES! They may have ‘whale’ in the name, but it is used here as an adjective, like Goliath, it is meant to denote their size. They are not mammals, they are fish. They do not lactate, grow hair, have lungs, or have warm blood. I don’t know how many people I’ve talk to about this who have said something along the lines of “omg, I’m so jealous, I’d love to swim with whales” or “weren’t you afraid to be that close to whales.” They’re not whales. At all.

END OF SOAP BOX RANT.

Breakfast was served a little earlier than normal as we needed to be on the road headed to the dive site around 7:30. I had my usual pancakes with fruit & before I knew it, we were off on the one & a half hour ride to the site.

The staff had asked that we gather & group our dive gear the night prior so that they could load it into the truck that would go ahead & meet us there with everything already previously prepared so that when we arrived & it was our turn to go, we could just find & collect our things from our milk crate, dress, & get right into the water.

We arrived at Taug Whaleshark Watching just before 9:30. Upon arrival we were ushered through a series of vendor stalls before being sat under a covered patio where we received our safety briefing about the sharks & filled our or consent forms & waivers. One of the main rules that was being hammered in was that of distance & touch. Naturally they asked that you not touch the sharks & that doing so would accrue a 15,000 NFP fine. Additionally they asked that you not get within 10 meters of the sharks or 12 meters from their tail as it has a rather large swing radius. They also explained that this morning, when the crews got to work, there were about eight whale sharks out off the shore & now there were three as they show up each morning to be fed by the organization.

I want to pause here to talk a little about the morality of this, of feeding wild animals essentially as a tourist attraction & where I fall on this spectrum as I know certain other members of the dive community at large fall on very opposite ends of what they believe to be right.

I, in the past, have done very similar experiences where the animals are incentivized by the prospect of food to show up & be spectacle for divers or other tourists, that’s essentially what happens in Beja during their shark dive as well. (Read about it here.) Each time that I participate in such a program I always end up with the same grey area feeling around it but, I think that Jamie, the dive master at Magic Oceans, actually had very good insight into the practice, especially in Bohol.

One night at the bar Darin asked Jamie his feelings on the feeding of the whale sharks. His response came in the form of a story. Jamie said that it used to be that whale sharks were free game. Free game for fishermen, for butchers, etc. There were no protection for the sharks & they would often be caught, butchered, & sold at markets for their meat. Then something shifted. Someone along the way picked up on the fact that a very large percentage of the world would love nothing more than to see a live whale shark up close, so they started a business & began feeding the sharks planktonic organisms in the same spot each day. This naturally got the sharks accustomed to being fed & not having to search the oceans for their rapidly dwindling food source. Then they started hiring staff, then they started allowing vendors around their business, & quickly the other locals picked up on the fact that people would pay for the experience which then would enrich their chances of also getting a slice of the pie. Turn back to the local markets, people started to get run out for selling the shark because it became an active representation of the destruction of the livelihood of those in the community & almost all at once the fishing & sale of whale shark meat diminished & disappeared.

I’m not here to say it’s objectively right or wrong, what I will say will err on the side of the former though. Whale sharks are an endangered species, climate change is decimating their populations as their food source continues to lessen & lessen in availability. We take in rhinos for protection, we take in big cats in the hopes of rehabilitating & reintroducing them at later dates, what’s the harm in doing so with massive sharks while still keeping them in their natural habitat? Do we not sell safaris in nature preserves to pay to protect the animals there within?

After sitting, waiting our turn for around 30 minutes to an hour we were called to dress.

The dive was a shore dive with a max depth around 45 feet. We were asked to suit up quickly & get into the water to finish off our kit so that the boats coming in with those who had gone out to feed & observe from the surface could get in & start unloading/loading their groups. All in all there were probably just short of a hundred people mingling about either beginning or ending their trip with the sharks. We were apparently the last dive group of the day, so we weren't given a time limit for our excursion.

Long Spined Sea Urchins w/ Threadfin Cardinalfish

Once we were all in & kitted, we began the kick out to the site. The shoreline was rather rocky & full of urchins so they had us submerge as soon as we could in part so we weren’t stepping on anyone of their homes but also so that we could get lower in the water, giving the sharks ample space to swim above us just below the surface.

We were at about 35 feet when I saw my first wild whale shark. I was just kicking along, out into the Bohol Sea when I heard the clicks of JR’s carabiner. I found him in the water & he pointed up & there, about twenty feet above me, swam three whale sharks.

The group of three featured two sharks that were about 15-20 feet in length, the third was massive probably anywhere from 30-40 feet in length with a tail around 9 feet in height. They were easily the largest animals I had ever seen much less been in close proximity to. I was beaming!

Over the next hour we floated, suspended almost entirely in the middle of the bottom & the surface staring in awe & amazement as the sharks crossed back & forth collecting the food that had been thrown out for them. The largest shark, however, seemed to have the whole “feeding game” figured out & was situated at the surface the entirely of the time at around a 45º angle between the two boats that were throwing out the food. It didn’t move from its spot as its tail swooshed back & forth behind it, keeping its head elevated to the surface where it funneled in a constant flow of water & food.

At one point we all got a little sick of being reserved to the bottom/middle of the water column as we watched the groups of snorkelers go right up next to the shark & we decided to raise ourself up to a depth of about 15 feet instead. As soon as we did this I almost got bulled over by one of the smaller sharks who swam in from behind me. Luckily I saw it coming & was able to drop back down underneath it, which ultimately resulted is an amazing shot!

After we got out we dried off & dressed. There were refreshments waiting for us & our ride back. We repacked all of our gear into our milk crates & boarded the vans back to Magic Oceans.

Since the dive site was a ways away it ate the time slot for both of the morning dives, meaning that following lunch there would only be the afternoon dive to round out the day.

Our afternoon dive was a wall dive called Coco North. A sloping wall dive, this one featured deep fissures where schools of fish would gather & take refuge. During out time here I actually encountered another nautical first for me, which is a swimming Feather Starfish!

Feather stars get their name from the frilled appearance of their appendages of which there are anywhere from 10-200, though they always appear in groups of five. They dust these super sticky limbs through the water collecting food but also use them to maneuver through the water appearing almost like a dancing spider as they do. To see them stationary is fairly common place, but occasionally you’ll manage to see one fluttering about, which is a rather surreal experience!

In addition to the starfish we also stumbled upon a multitude of clams, some Yellow Boxfish, a few Orange-lined Triggerfish ( I prefer the aquarists term of “Undulate Triggerfish), & even happened upon a Fimbriated Moray Eel! The eel was tucked behind a crusting coral & didn’t want to say hi, despite our best efforts to get the beautiful creature to come out of its lair for a few photos.

In addition to all that the wall hosted a number of clownfish with anemones, Banded Coral Shrimp, Nudibranchs aplenty, Cleaner Wrasse, & more.

When we rounded the top of the wall there was a large school of Sergeant Majors waiting to greet us in addition to all of the soft corals & even a Banana Wrasse.

Post dives we made our nightly trip to the bar to await dinner & chat with Ester whom we got into a lovely heartfelt conversation about the differences in life between The US & The Philippines. As per usual, we also talked about movies & TV shows & which she was watching in the evenings when work was slow or when she got home after getting off. We made our recommendations & she made hers.

Dinner was served in the usual way & after some much need sustenance we once again retired for the night. Though before my head hit the pillow & drifted my off to dreamland I snuck down to the end of the dock for a bit of star gazing.

One of my favorite parts about being in a more remote part of the world with not as much light pollution, especially around the water, is the ability to see the stars. They’re the only times that I’ve managed to catch glimpses of The Milky Way.

All in all, it was one for the books, a day I will remember forever!

End Of Day Four

Day Five

Another morning, another Filipino Pancake with Fruit.

Our morning dive was a site called Island View. Yes, it did contain a view of an island, that island being Bohol. So I guess technically all of the dives we had should’ve been called “Island View.” It was also a wall dive.

While diving the view we encounter a multitude of lovely fish & other oceanic critters. There were a few types of Puffers: Porcupine, Dogfaced, & Valnetin’s Sharpnose, an Ornate Ghost Pipefish, loads of Anemones with Clowns, more Garibaldi Shrimp, Marbled Tile Starfish, a Crown-Of-Thorns Starfish, the clusterf- of Nudies we’ve come to expect, Frogfish, & even a little Snowflake Eel.

The morning dive was followed by a second at a site called “Coral Garden.”

Coral Garden was aptly named as the top reef was a vibrant myriad of corals & fish swimming about. Most of the top side crew were Damsels in variety: Sergeant Majors, Black Damsels, Staghorns, & Yellowtail Blue Damsels. Once we descended over the side of the wall, down the drop off, the reef traffic definitely got a bit quieter, & a lot less territorial.

You know, now that I think about it, this may be the first & only dive trip in which I wasn’t attacked by some sort of Damsel while diving…huh.

Off the wall we found Big Eye Soldierfish, a few Dwarf Hawkfish perched in the Barrel Sponges, more schools of Juvenile Engineer Gobies, Rabbitfish, a Soft Coral Crab, some spaghetti looking Nudibranchs, a school of Drummerfish, another two Sea Turtles, & a colony of Coral Catfish! It also ended up including one of my favorite dive happenings; diving in the rain!

Cari asked me when I explained that I love diving in the rain if I’d even noticed that it was until we’d hit the surface & while I don’t think I outright knew it was raining from depth, I definitely could hear & feel it around 20 feet. It also does something interesting to the animals below water where I feel it makes them a touch more active, though that could just be a wildly skewed observation that has no actual scientific merit to it in any regard. Either way, I love coming up out of the water into the rain, there’s something otherworldly about it.

When we got back to the resort it was lunch time. I can’t entirely recall what the option was for the day but I’m pretty sure it was like a chicken sandwich or something. As we were sat waiting I noticed JR & some of the other dive guides going up to the kitchen with a bowl & a plate & leaving with something entirely different than the options that we had been presented. I called over one of the kitchen staff & asked her about it, she told me it was the staff lunch, a Filipino stew of some sort. Naturally, I ask her if I could try it. She disappeared back to the kitchen for a second & returned to ask me if I was sure & when I said that I was she asked if I wanted it with rice. I told her to bring it however they would eat it, but only if there was still plenty for the staff. She brought me back a massive bowl of the stew & a side of rice.

I’m not entirely sure what was in the stew other than a varietal of Bok Choy & maybe some Pork with Potatoes. Looking through Filipino stews online I’m not sure it wasn’t Nilaga/Nilagang, either way it was salty & savory & really hit the spot on what had turned out to be a rainy afternoon.

I can’t recall if I skipped out on the afternoon dive or if there wasn’t one because of the events planned for the evening. I think it was the former as at this point I think my ear was being a bit wonky…we’ll get to that in part three… At any rate I think I may have napped & then gone & sat at the bar for a bit before our scheduled evening activities.

The Duffins are rather huge fans of a sunset cruise. They like to book the dive boat out with drinks & snacks & go out on the waves for a bit & just spend a little bit of time socializing & relaxing in the sea air & I’m not mad at that. We did one in Indonesia (you can read about it here) & I think attempted one in Fiji as well, but the tides wouldn’t allow for it. So as the sun began to sank we all filed onto one of the cleaned off dive boats & away we went.

The staff had thought ahead & taken our two drink order days prior to the expedition. They prepared plates of chips & other snacky bits & also had a partial service bar set up to bring us our preordered beverages. Evan & I both ordered Rum & Cokes because they’re an easy staple, especially in the tropics, & we sat atop the cabin sipping them & talking with Deb & some of the other members of our party.

At a certain point someone spotted a pod of, what we thought were dolphins. The boat maneuvered in the direction it looked like they were headed & when we got closer we found, what I believe to have been, a pod of Melon-Headed Whales. They were breaching the waves, skimming along the surface & every time a new one would crop up we’d head in their direction. Previously Ester had mentioned that right after the pandemic their had been a Sperm Whale sighting off the coast of the resort & that when they had shared about it to their socials they’d had a person later come looking for it. Some guest had flown halfway across the world to the resort & requested to be taken to the whale…a migratory species that swims up & down the globe.

After about an hour cruising around on the waves we headed back to the resort for dinner. A lot of us we a little toasty from the drink both before & during the sunset cruise so dinner was a bit of a ruckus. After dinner the staff brought out a congratulatory cake for Evan & the Duffin’s Son’s Friend who had completely a Nitrox Class & an Open Water Certification respectively. The cake was adorable, it featured who little fondant divers over a reef with their names inscribed in icing.

We all enjoyed a slice of the cake & with the alcohol starting to leave our bloodstreams & the exhaustion setting in, went off to sleep.

End Of Day Five

End Of Part Two