Dive Day #6 – Buceo Anilao – Richard
Today is actually resort transfer day so we got up a little earlier, prepped the cameras, got our dive gear on and threw what’s left into various bags.
Now we are about to have breakfast whilst waiting for our water taxi to arrive.
We had thunderstorms over night and a lot of rain (they only watered the gardens yesterday!).
The sharper eyed amongst you may have spotted a teaser in Jo’s post yesterday, something about ‘we all eventually met up at 4m’. the finer detail involves a story regarding my weight pouches and a struggle to descend, you can fill in the blanks.
The water taxi should take little over 30 minutes (depending on conditions) to make the journey between the resorts. When we arrive at Anilao there will be a boat waiting to take us straight out diving (which is why we are already dressed for diving!) along with one other diver ‘Nina’ who’s an ex-pat living in Malaysia who we first met out here over a decade ago and several times since.
The taxi pulls up at around 07.20 and by 07.29 we are on our way to Anilao.
The captain informs us that because of the monsoon (!) he might need to drop us around the corner from the resort. Thankfully it’s all quite flat and we are dropped off at 08.02 and less than 15 minutes later we are on board a dive boat and headed out for our first dive.
Dive #16 – Minilog
Lots of shrimp and Nudi action in particular a nice dragon shrimp and a large octopus decided to bury itself out off our gaze.
Dive #17 – Olympic
More of the same here minus the dragon shrimp.
Lunch was a relatively minimalistic coleslaw and fries, just what we wanted!
After a bit of camera prep it’s time to get back in for the afternoon dive.
Dive #18 – Vievery
This is basically a dandy slope down to about 24m which is where we are headed to find the black hairy frog fish and sure enough, there it is in all its glory.
One thing about black frogfish in general is that they are visually impossible to photograph what with them just being so over black and all.
The hairy variant is no exception to this rule, all very splendid to look at but any attempt to take photos produces a black blob with no distinguishing features so you’ll just have to take my word for it, it was black, it was hairy and it was most definitely a frog fish.
Then it’s back to base for a quick cuppa before we head out for the last dive of the day which was meant to be ‘bubbles’ but because of their policy of not putting divers in where there is any current, we diverted!
Dive #19 – Mainit Corner
This was a spectacular dive on another of our favourite sites with much Nudi action to be seen on this amazing site which is at the end of a rocky outcrop and underwater, the rocky outcrop extends to the seabed. All very awesome.