Flat as a pancake out there…
Nice!
For breakfast, we forewent the eggs and opted for fried rice and chicken nuggets. Strange but satisfying.
We are really trying to blend in with the locals here, so we are learning the language… 😂🤣😂🤣😂
What we have so far is…
Magandang umaga – good morning
Magandang hapon – good afternoon
Magandang gabii – good evening
Also maganda means beautiful, so if you have been on a beautiful dive you say maganda dive.
Not currently up to the correct speed, so the equivalent in English that I am saying is gggoooooddd mmmooooorniiinnng.
Everyone here is being so supportive and helping me
I really am an international women of languages! This morning I responded Guten Tag to one of our boat buddies. When I was asked ‘wie hast du geschlafen?’ I responded ‘ja’, once she explained what she had said. Go me!
I’ve just Google translated ‘how are you?’in Tagalog. The result was ‘kumusta ka?’ so I will try that when we go to the dive centre. Problem is that if they reply, I won’t know if they are responding to my question or if they are saying ‘mad English lady, I don’t know what you are saying!’
So I tried it out on Roly from the dive centre. It worked. The answer was ‘okay lang’ which means I am good. Another response could be ‘ayos lang’ which means I am okay. That seems the wrong way round to me but there it is.
We headed around the corner to Secret Bay where the coastguard comes to check on us, as they do each morning. Then off to Red Rock…
Dive #41
Bubbles
Too much current at Red Rock so back to bubbles. Richard wanted to go out to the end of the wall at about 27 metres. Which we did and then bimbled back. Played hunt the buddy.
We saw a huge cuttlefish, about 18 inches long. Porcelain crabs, a pair of beautiful risbecia. A massive shoal of mackerel swimming back and forth.
Surface was rough, it was flat when we went in.
Much laughter, as Ingrid did acrobatics to do a wee over the side of the boat.
During the surface interval, we moved around the corner to Twin Rocks. Moored north of the site with the view of being picked up at the rocks.
Dive #42
Twin Rocks north
Absolutely fabulous dive
The area under the boat was sand with lots of little coral outcrops. As we moved south the outcrops gradually increased in size. It was beautiful.
We reached the twin Rocks, two pinnacles, absolutely festooned with life.
We saw flabelinas, beautiful risbecia, a huge turtle, a couple of the pink Cinderella nudis. Shrimps and fish on wire coral. Shoal of barracuda.
Brilliant!
Lunch was a BLT and fish ceviche.
Camera stuff followed by a nap.
Dive #43
Manit West
Bumpy on top
Calmness and serenity beneath.
Raute joined us for this dive.
Such a relaxing dive. Quite a steep coral covered slope with a plateau on the top.
Lots of everything to see. Ribbon eels, small painted frogfish, porcelain crabs, an assortment of nudis.
As it was so hot and sunny, we spent our surface interval in the pool.
Dive #44
Arthur’s Wall night dive
Just us and Nanny on the boat. The German threesome did the House reef.
Had an annoying squeak in my regs for the first 25 mins of the dive, then it just cleared. Thank goodness.
We went to the wall and down to about 22 metres. A very beautiful wall. It felt very different at night, just us and Nanny.
Apart from the actual wall, we also saw various slugs, two very large crabs mating, although one didn’t seem so keen, and a shy cuttlefish.
A bit of current came up whilst we were on the wall.
A quick drink at the bar and then dinner of lumpia, sweet and sour chicken with fried rice. Yum!
Camera work and Richard had to do a little actual work before bed.