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| Sunset over coron |
Unfortunately for quite a lot of our time in the Philippines it rained! And our next and final stop was no exception. We took a little boat from El Nido to Coron, accompanied by a group of hung over, English uni students and a very eccentric 36 year old Dutch guy, Egor.
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| Wreck diving - very dark & claustrophobic |
The main highlights of Coron were another island hopping tour where we saw some more amazing lagoons. One place called the twin lagoons had two adjacent lakes that at high tide you had to swim down and under some rock to go between the two. We also did some wreck diving! There are 24 Japanese war ships located in the vicinity of Coron that sunk during WW2. We were able to snorkel above one, and dive down to three others. For the first wreck dive we swam around the outside of the wreck that was covered in beautiful coral, admiring both the wreck and of course the abundant marine. The second dive we swam inside the wreck, going to the engine room and swimming between the different floors of the ship. To be completely honest although cool afterwards, at the time I found it really scary…the visibility was very poor, maybe 1-2m, so we were literally on top of the wreck before we realised it was there. Equipped with our torches we then swam into the pitch black hole on the side of the ship and into the claustrophobic unknown. I spent the first part of the dive so anxious that I was basically swimming on top of the divemaster…particularly embarrassing when he leisurely turned around to point out something of interest and I went colliding into him, scaring myself as much as him and probably using half my tank at the same time! Once I had calmed down a little I then spent the remainder of the dive worrying that I’d used so much of my air already that I was going to have to signal to the guide and we’d have to finish the dive super early…luckily everything was actually fine and I conquered all my fears to thoroughly enjoy the next dive! Mike loved it…every so often I’d hear him banging into the side of the ship somewhere behind me as he concentrated too hard on a particular photo and forgot his surroundings, but no major problems.
On our final day we took a sea kayak out and kayaked around the islands to a couple of good snorkeling spots. After a total of about 7 hours kayaking we returned home, exhausted and thoroughly sun burnt but having had a great day! We had planned to spend our last evening planning Indonesia (where we were heading the next day) …but instead were once again coerced into shots at the bar by the English uni students and Egor. There was quite a group of us in the end but no one was allowed near the bar as Egor was proudly supplying the demand. When one of the English guys offered to buy some drinks his reply was simply “NO! YOU are student…I am EGOR!” and I think that summed him up really
J
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