I posted a picture of the dolphins before, but nothing like seeing them in video, racing the boat! There were at least a hundred of them, everywhere in the horizon we could see more popping up. Sadly, they disappeared as soon as we stopped the boat and jumped in to swim with them. (As before, vimeo won’t let me link to the HD version, but if you watch on their site you’ll see the full quality video.)
I know I jumped right into talking about our trip to Siquijor before I even finished sharing the pictures from Palau, but I never claimed to be organized!
We couldn’t dive on our last day in Palau (since we were flying out that night), so four of us rented a car and decided to take a road trip around the main island, crossing 9 states in a few hours (they’re tiny tiny states!) with a few stops along the way. The roads were surprisingly great (new pavement, no potholes!), and it was a lot of fun – I highly recommend it!
First stop was hiking down to waterfalls…
Our friend Maria with the view…
Yes, we had to hike this back up…
Yep, that’s me and Karl!
We made it to the very tip of the island!
A very very old coffin…
Yes, I totally forgot the name of these ruins… They’re rumored to be about 2,000 years old.
They have a huge capitol building for such a small country!
Aside from our road trip, I have a few pictures taken with my iPhone that I haven’t shared yet. Like the view from our hotel room…
I would have eaten at Kramer’s everyday if they weren’t always closed (twice we went there with friends and they were closed – I guess they don’t open for lunch, nor do they open at all on Sundays. Bummer. But we did get to eat there twice!).
Karl enjoying some local Red Rooster brew (we bought some Red Rooster mugs as souvenirs too!).
Probably the best blackened sashimi I’ve ever had. (Ignore the seeds from the calamansi, it didn’t come served like that, but I only thought of taking a picture after squeezing the juice on it, and eating a few pieces, ooops!) The tuna was so fresh, you barely had to chew, it was like butter, amazing! Their fish tacos were pretty good too!
Here’s hoping I can get back to Palau before we leave the Philippines! And eat more of that amazing sashimi…
I’m still trying to put my videos together (anyone can recommend a good software to merge videos? I’ve been trying Format Factory but with a lot of mixed results).
I posted pictures of sharks, turtles and manta rays, but we also saw a lot of cool fish and other stuff while diving. The huge Napoleon Wrasse was my favorite! (And the friendliest of fish, it came so close!)
Getting cleaned up!
Pucker up!
Crocodile Fish!
Unicorn fish!
Cuttlefish! Can you see it?
Feather Star Fish – they’re everywhere here in the Philippines, see the little legs?
What IS this thing?
How about this metal looking thing?
Triggerfish! It looks like it’s passing out – it’s just a trick…
You get too close and it attacks! (Luckily I moved out of the way before it bit me.)
That’s me below!
Me again with some giant clams – see them to my right?
Diving in Palau was spectacular! On most dives we had over 100 feet visibility (I think the worst visibility was at German Channel to see the manta rays because of the sandy bottom, but that was still at least 50ft or so visibility).
If you ever have a chance to go to Palau (even if you don’t dive), make sure to jump at the opportunity. It’s a beautiful country and one of my favorite trips! We did a road trip on the main island on the last day as well, and I’ll definitely share those pictures soon!
Yep, while diving in Palau we saw sharks, turtles AND manta rays.
We dove twice at the German Channel, which is a manta ray cleaning station, and we spotted HUGE manta rays on our dives!
The pictures do not do it justice, but the one in the last few pictures was at least 3 to 4 meters long (the people in the shot were a good 10 feet or more closer to me than the manta ray).
Here are some of the shots…
I know the manta ray doesn’t look so big compared to Karl – but compare his color to the manta’s – can you tell he was about 10-15 feet closer to me than the manta ray is (which was much deeper than us?).
To have an idea of its sheer size, that coral underneath it in the picture below is where we had been waiting for a long time, before we started to run out of air (yes, it showed up right as we moved on to start ascending). There were about 7 of us waiting in one side of that coral – 7 people!
