Our next destination was Malapascua. Malapascua is famous for its dives. There you can find Thresher sharks and mandarin fish ! 2 beautiful creatures that I had never seen. So I was very much looking forward to it.

To get there it took:

1h on the ferry from Siquijor to Dumaguete

20 min tricycle from Dumaguete to the other ferry terminal

30 min on a smaller ferry boat (with plastic benches) from Tampi to Bato

1h waiting at the terminal for a decent bus (thanks Neil, that wasn't necessary, the 1st one would have been fine!)

10 min tricycle to another bus stop

5h bus from Bato to Cebu

A night in Cebu (Neil wanted to have a look at the Sinulog festival, which actually wasn't really happening before another 4 days)

4h on a bus from Cebu to Maya

1h on a small bangka on a very rough sea

10 min on a bike...

Yes you have to deserve it !! I had booked a bed in the dorm and Neil had nothing because he doesn't like dorms...he ended up paying 2000 PHP (a dorm is 400 PHP there !)

The reason why the sea was so rough is because a typhoon was coming.So the next day it was cold, rainy and windy. Everyone stayed a the hostel, watching movies, sorting pictures...That's when I met David, a spanish dive instructors who was gonna go back to work in Koh Tao after 6 months in Bohol. He has a Canon powershot G16, the new version of my camera, so we got to talk a lot. That past the day pretty smoothly.

The typhoon was small but still kept everyone inside. The dives were cancelled the next day so I had to wait for another one to finally go diving with the Thresher sharks. It was very disappointing to be honest. The viz was horrible, the current between the surface and 15 m was very strong and only one shark made a very quick appearance. So I decided I'd go back the next day. David, who was my dive buddy wasn't sure if he wanted to go back.

The next dive wasn't good at all. The water was green and besides a few nudibranch and a couple of frogfish (still pretty cool), there was nothing interesting about this dive. So we waited for our 3rd dive of the day pretty impatiently ! The dusk/night dive with the Mandarin fish ! This one was brilliant !! David took amazing pictures (impossible with my camera, with the same settings and without a flash diffuser... :( ) and we came back very happy from this dive.

The next day, I hesitated to go diving. I had done 3 dives the day before it was 6am, our dive was being postponed because some idiots had loaded the small boat with gear at high tide and it was low tide then (didn't think this through when we got stuck the day before, same time, less people, for the exact same reason !!!). Anyway, my flight the next day was at 5.30 and I really wanted

1) to NOT get bent. Even though I know my heart is definitely fixed, I didn't want to push it and waith for 24h between my last dive and my flight. It would be 22

2) to dive with a thresher shark....

I ended up going diving. And David having changed his mind and being my buddy told me I should to, that I'd be fine. The recommandation from PADI being 18h between the last dive and a flight.

The first 10 to 15 minutes of the dive nothing was happening. We went down to the cleaning station located at 28m and waited. I started thinking that I was taking risks for nothing, that I was gonna fly with so much nitrogen into my system for nothing, etc. When we changed of cleaning station on shark was swimming around the divers that were there and about to leave.Which left us front row, with a frecking amazing creatures swimming very close to us. David and I couldn't stop smiling while in the water. 2 kids. So excited !!!! I think we kept this grin on our face for a good part of the day ! But it was the day I had to leave so we exchanged photos and videos, I charged my phone and tablet and packed my bag. I had booked my flight with Neil so we were gonna take it together. He left Malapascua the day before and I had tried to change my ticket but it was too expensive. I really would have loved to stay longer in Malapascua but flights can't be changed so easily.

It took about 5h to go back to Cebu, without counting the 30 min(smooth this time) bangka ride.

I hanged around for a couple of hours before I actually managed to get Neil on the phone. I joined him in this big shopping mall where we spent quite a few hours, including a very bad movie at the cinema. We had to check in at the airport at 3h30am so there was no way we were going to pay for a room somewhere. The cinema and the different taxi rides ended up being close to the same price as getting a room but well....

The 5h35am flight was taking us to Puerto Princesa, Palawan.