Weekend Resort Hideaways

Cuttlefish photo by Junjie Koh, jacks photo by Jay Ortiz

The blue waters of Batangas—being only a two-hour-and-a-half drive from Manila—have “baptized” many, me included, into the diving community. That Independence Day weekend seven years ago proved fitting as I surfaced from my open water check-out dive with a larger appreciation of two-thirds of our planet. Fortunately for me, along with that initiation into a submerged world came a built-in network all set to walk, er, fin every novice diver through it.

My own set of teachers consists of: Jay Ortiz (mobile 0917-8992000), who took me from house reef to liveaboard diving; Jimbo Jimenez (mobile 0920-9509631), first to introduce me to night diving; and Ian Paredes (0917-8395515) who gave me my advanced certification. All three are fathers, businessmen, and—long before they were either—avid divers, who, in their over-a-decade underwater exploration and instruction, can easily point to where I want or need to go next. And that includes (even before gearing up and getting into a dive banca) planning where to stay in Batangas.

With diving in its waters being possible all year round (though between November and June—sitting out the typhoon season—is best), its coastline is adorned with resorts that spoil divers for choice. Jay, Ian, and Jimbo help narrow it down by naming the ones they most frequent.

Ardent divers who naturally want to get more dives for their money go to Aquaventure Reef Club (tel. 5326681, mobile 09189291648) in Anilao. Overnight packages that include four buffet meals range from P2,700 per person for twin sharing to P3,200 for single occupancy. Day trip charge is at least P500. Jay and Ian both cite the friendly staff and excellent service. “Still the best buffet food,” Jimbo says. “Their restaurant also prepares ala carte meals,” Ian adds. Jay describes its party atmosphere as welcoming especially to new divers. An open-air bar invites sunset cocktails by the deck that lead into fun evening get-togethers.

Solana (mobile 0917-3001086) in San Teodoro, Mabini also gets the thumbs-up for its facilities, service, food, and laidback ambiance. “When you want a weekend getaway that’s similar to Palawan resorts, this is the place,” Jay says. Ian counts as bonus “the seasonal beach that forms in front of the house reef.” Their beachfront and hillside rooms (air conditioned with hot shower and intercom) have their own spacious veranda for taking in the panoramic sight of sea and sky. Rates range from $90 to $150 per head per night.

If you want to bring a non-diver date, Jay says, you can’t go wrong with Planet Dive (tel. 9063898, mobile 0927-2308008) in San Teodoro, Mabini. “Right in front of the resort is a nice reef for diving or snorkeling.” Jimbo also notes that the resort is close to the dive sites, and its ocean-view rooms are perfectly relaxing. Day trip rates range from P700 for a non-diver (includes buffet lunch, use of snorkeling gear and kayak) to P1,500 for a diver (includes buffet lunch, two boat dives, and unlimited shore dives). Overnight packages bundling four buffet meals range from P1,800 per non-diver for quad sharing to P4,300 per diver for single occupancy.

Dive & Trek (tel. 8518746, mobile 0920-9064123) in San Pablo, Bauan gets Ian’s best-value-for-money award. As he puts it, “Where else in Anilao can you find a school of jacks, pawikan, and sharks less than 100 meters from the shore?” Jimbo confirms the appeal of “unlimited diving in what can be argued as the best house reef in Batangas.” Jay adds that non-divers, with mask and snorkel, can also experience the marine sanctuary’s teeming reef life. The resort has a seaside swimming pool, volleyball court, and conference rooms. Rates range from P1,350 (day trip snorkeling package with lunch and boat transfers) to P4,350 (overnight package includes an air-conditioned room, four meals, and unlimited dives).

Eagle Point (tel. 8133553, mobile 09178544944) in Bagalangit, Mabini is ideal for families or groups with non-divers, Ian says, because of its swimming pools (saltwater and freshwater, the latter with waterfalls and waterslide), children’s playground, game room, cable TV and other creature comforts. Jimbo says the saltwater pool houses baby sharks rescued from fishermen’s nets for rehabilitation before eventual release—raising marine conservation awareness among guests who are invited to look, even swim with them, but not touch. Overnight rates per person range from P2,800 for triple sharing in a fan room to P5,950 for single occupancy in an air-conditioned room. A day tour package per person costs P1,600.

The fusion cuisine of Pier Uno (tel. 7437576, mobile 0917-8081877) in Anilao has reeled in Jay. “They put their own touch on a variety of Filipino, Chinese, and American dishes.” Jimbo is equally captivated with the resort’s set up of Casita rooms (from P2,200 per person for quad sharing to P4,100 single occupancy) and Kubo rooms (P2,500 per person for twin sharing and P3,200 per person for single occupancy).These overnight rates in air-conditioned rooms with hot showers (plus Cable TV for Casita) include four buffet meals. “The service is amazing,” Jimbo adds, and with the parking area located right beside the rooms, “no long walks or steep steps.”

Portulano (mobile 0917-5404257) in Bauan, according to Jay, has great food and service (“feels personalized”) while Jimbo specifically mentions how the doors to the room can be fully opened for the breeze and breathtaking view. Sunrise to night sky can be enjoyed from your own private veranda. Overnight packages per person which include four meals range from P2,150 for quad sharing in a fan room to P5,300 for single occupancy in an air-conditioned room.

Built on a rocky slope in San Teodoro Mabini, the cottages of Balai (tel. 240-2927) offer tree-framed views of the sea. “Balai’s environment is perfect for guests who enjoy just hanging-out,” Ian says. “Nice open-air lounge,” agrees Jay, “and superb food.” Overnight non-diver packages (four buffet meals and hot shower included) range from P1,850 for triple sharing to P2,800 for single occupancy. Overnight diver packages (two dives a day for two days, dive boat fees, dive master services included) range from P3,300 triple sharing to P4,250 single occupancy. For those who can’t sleep without air conditioning, Balai charges an additional P600 per night.

When Jimbo wants peace and quiet, his choice is Club Ocellaris (tel. 6721451, mobile 09178901073) in Anilao. Sharing a resort meal (described as world-class) and conversation with owner-operator and instructor Boy Venus leave you in awe of the unusual and rare critters found in Batangas waters. Many photographers keen on documenting that beauty underwater consider Ocellaris as “headquarters.” And yes, the resort is named after the bright orange-and-white Ocellaris Clownfish whose symbiotic relationship with its host anemone Boy likens to us and our fragile environment. In keeping with the private feel of Ocellaris (like you’ve been invited to be a special guest in a friend’s vacation house), email boyv@clubocellaris.com to request for rates.

Jimbo has Villa Ligaya (tel. 896-6016) in Anilao on his list for their speedboats. Departing in the morning for, say, Puerto Galera or Verde Island which takes 45 minutes one-way, you can do two dives out, be back in Anilao around lunch time, and still decide if you want a third dive. An overnight package which covers buffet meals (three on weekdays, four on weekends) ranges from P1,450 for fan dorms to P3,500 for air-conditoned single-occupancy rooms. A day trip which includes a buffet lunch costs P600. Kids aged two to seven get 50% off; and if they’re younger, they’re free-of-charge.

Rockport Beach Resort (tel. 043-4080671, mobile 09175319158) is situated in a protected cove in Balite, San Luis. The motto here is “Life is good!”—which, over the years, Jay has adopted as a personal philosophy too. (Talk about positive influence.) Day trip rate per person which includes a room and buffet lunch is P600; P500 if you don’t need a room. Overnight accommodation with three buffet meals cost P1,550 with any extra meal at P350. Jay especially enjoys Rockport’s chicken pandan and lumpiang bangus. Also a plus for him is the convenience of being able to park his vehicle near the cottages.

For non-divers, any of these resorts can arrange for island hopping, cruising, private beach picnics, kayaking, trekking, recreational games, snorkeling, intro-diving—whatever you need to feel that, indeed, life is good. Certainly, every time my boat heads back to the resort after the day’s last dive, I find myself looking forward to the waiting meal and companionship, warming the heart like the comforts of home.

Whaleshark Season

Photos by Junjie Koh

Where do people go for answers? My friend wasn’t exactly into saintly intercession or parental advice. That left us with the nature quest—a common enough refuge for gaining so-called clarity. We were at our respective crossroads, procrastinating on a decision that could easily define our next five years. To get out of our own heads, we somehow convinced ourselves, we had to get out of urban Manila for a few days. And it seemed to us—as we leafed through ecotourism brochures—that an encounter with the “largest fish in the world” offered just that type of grand-scale experience that would likely, in a manner of speaking, put us in our place.

The prospect of leaping into a giant’s watery domain demanded the reassurance that learning about them beforehand afforded. Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus), butanding to the locals, grow up to 60 feet and weigh up to 40 tons. Happily for us, they feed on plankton. This migratory species finds sanctuary in the protected waters around Donsol, Sorsogon from January to May (March to April being the best times to go).

And so we went. A 45-minute daily flight from Manila to Legazpi City—some don’t mind the 10-hour bus travel from Cubao’s central terminal—followed by a one-hour ride by passenger van (taxi or buses will do too) delivered us to the Donsol tourism office and visitor center (mobile phone +63 927-2330364; butanding_donsol@yahoo.com or ecotourismdonsol@yahoo.com). We paid the registration fees (P100 for Filipinos, P300 for foreigners) and split the P3,500 group fee that covered boat rental and fees for the Butanding Interaction Officer (BIO) and spotter-guide. We brought cash because credit card facilities were not available, at least not yet. For accommodations, we were given plenty of choices: beach resort cottages like Woodland (mobile phone +63 921-9699544) and Amor Farm (+63 917-6941687) and several homestays.

With the practicalities dealt with, we made a gift of our bubbling excitement to our assigned BIO. He turned teacher. An illustration he traced with a finger showed how we were expected to maintain a distance of three meters from the whale shark’s head and body, and four meters from its tail. We were not to get in its natural path. And, by the way the BIO kept reminding us not to touch the whale shark, we could guess many must have lost their heads in the moment and tried just that. “No flash photography, no scuba diving, no unnecessary thrashing in the water…” These giants are clearly shy.

Snorkeling gear could be rented on site but we packed our own. An ill-fitting mask, we imagined, could flood upon us plunging in, and the initial shock of that could lose us the seconds it takes to zero in on a whale shark. It would be equally disastrous to be finning after a better sight of a butanding only to find we’ve slowed because a strap broke and one fin has dropped to irretrievable depths. (My friend is a master at worst-case scenarios.)


We’re also told that no more than six swimmers per whale shark are allowed and only one outrigger boat per whale shark. We joked about suddenly feeling competitive against the other groups scheduled to head out that same morning. Every BIO’s pleasure, our guide confirmed, is for his boatload of visitors to experience the amazement of staring down into the deep blue, only to realize with a jolt that he’s seeing silvery-white spots, and then finally making out the moving outline of a butanding beneath him. No one forgets that first instance of recognition. Especially because nature doesn’t always put on a show. Just the day before, Japanese tourists logged in an entire day without a single sighting.

We hoped for better luck as our boat motored through open water. We even wore our optimism: vests on, fins fastened, masks around our neck. The BIO wanted us ready to jump overboard upon his signal. A half hour later, butanding unseen, we were beginning to feel a little silly about being so dressed for the water yet remaining dry on the boat.

Just when my friend was starting to reconsider the merits of seeking saintly intercession, we got our signal from the BIO. “Talon!” And so we jumped after him, hitting the water in a graceless splash. There was hard swimming in between coughing of saltwater (a far match from the magically serene communion-with-nature we pictured) as we tried to keep up with the BIO who positioned himself ahead like a buoy to keep us oriented. We were soon confused anyway because the BIO seemed to be heading back. “Tigil! Tingin sa baba! (Stop! Look down!)” he yelled over the choppy waves.

The BIO, bless his heart, expertly deduced that the whale shark’s “grazing” direction would cut below our boat. We planted our faces in the water, not seeing very far in the “nutrient soup” that cultivated the algae that fed the krill that attracted the whale shark. Then I felt a tug from behind. Our BIO was Superman. He pulled on my vest with one hand and my friend’s vest with the other and, with a few strong kicks, he got us in place just in time to see a wide, flat head and a small eye from our angle. A capacious mouth sucked water that was strained through its gills, filtering its food. A massive blue-grey body—with its telltale pale yellow dots, vertical ridges, pairs of pectoral and dorsal fins, and muscular tail—glided ponderously underneath us. We could see it was going to dive back into the blue. Taking quick mental snapshots, cropping images here and there, was how I responded to the ephemeral quality and scale of it. Huge, I thought. The entire moment, despite taking less than a minute, was huge—the kind that makes us go: I can do the next thing now.

Later, as the day turned to dusk, our boat cruised the Donsol river lined with mangroves that winked with fireflies. We were still aglow ourselves, momentarily bonded by a powerful shared-experience. Our BIO was happy about notching that for us. He’s had days when he’s counted over 10 whale sharks in a single hour, making one-for-the-day sightings all the more precious. As a younger man, he shared, he wanted to be a seafarer to see the world. Now—with a local ecotourism industry in place that helps preserve the vulnerable whale shark and its habitat—the rest of the world comes to his fishing village and him for their take-away encounter. The whale sharks make him special. Communing with the giants does change everyone.

Colorful Characters (And I Don't Mean the Fishes)

Photo credit: Junjie Kho

1. I once found myself diving with a yoga instructor who wore white like a trademark and who, it was whispered around the deck, tutored presidents and CEOs. I wondered then why this supposed master at breathing was exhaling bubbles at shallow intervals, consuming air faster than the rest of us.

She was excitable, barreling through other divers for a closer look at say, a pawikan (sea turtle) or marble ray, disturbing it away to the group’s exasperation. For a practitioner of body awareness, I noted with some fascination, this woman did not seem to know how to position herself unobtrusively around marine life.

2. I also ended up diving with a deaf-mute underwater photographer who initially had trouble connecting with people (most shied away from the perceived extra effort of trying to make sense of his gesticulations). Underwater, however, where everyone was muted anyway, he was a master at the hand signals, truly in his element, the most animated and “talkative” in the group.

Dangling the promise of an underwater photo-souvenir, he confidently herded (with energetic wrist flicks) divers this way and that for the best backdrop of schooling barracudas—although I noticed, he didn’t always press the camera button!

3. While on our knees and lined up in a row on Monad Shoal in Malapascua (waiting, waiting for a manta to glide in), we were semi-aware of one local divemaster swimming to and fro from behind our backs—methodically picking up one octopus (back-up regulator) after another, seemingly examining it, test-breathing from it, even hand-signaling O.K.

Later, he confessed that he was already about to backroll when he discovered that his tank had only 1,500 psi. This being the second dive, and with all the other tanks awarded to guests, he decided to just go with it and, when he already needed to, just start “testing” other divers’ air. Ingenious.

4. On a dive in Apo Reef, three divers, including our most regular divemaster, brought down one newly bought underwater camera housing each to TEST against possible leaking-under-pressure.

Midway into the dive, what else would choose to reveal itself but a magnificent hammerhead shark!

No one in the group had ever seen one before. Tanks were banged like crazy. Arms punched overhead. Muffled screams. And they could've kicked themselves over the fact that all three camera housings contained only…drumroll please…paper.

5. We were doing Tubbataha out on the Sulu Seas for the entire last week of May when blue skies turned grey. With the onslaught of wind and rain, our charter boat pitched and rolled. I chose to stay up on deck because I figured looking out on the horizon helped with possible dizziness better than being cooped up in my cabin.

Soon enough however, one guy couldn’t help but hurl his lunch over the rail (look out down below!). Then, like a wave, up to four people followed suit with their own gagging-and-heaving. It was not a pretty sight.

So, with all that going on, no one noticed early enough that one of the chase boats tethered to the side of our “mother boat” was being tossed by swells—hard enough for it to slip under and then turn over! Unfortunately, in that very chase boat were the BCs, regs, and other gear of a group of divers supposedly scheduled to head out (before the weather turned).

Everyone was suddenly on one side of our boat, watching the submerged chase boat as it further receded under. At least two guys hurriedly suited up in a valiant effort to rescue the gear but by then these were sunk to impossible depths.

The pity for this group who lost their gear (and consequently, the chance to go out on the last few precious dives of the trip) was quite palpable.

Then came the announcement: the company’s dive shop back in Manila will outfit these guys with top-of-the-line replacements for everything they lost—down to every reel, slate or whatever equipment declared hooked to their BCs when these went down.

Human nature being what it is, pity quickly turned to envy, and there was actual talk of maybe tossing one’s own battered gear (include the rusty dive knife! and the flooded torch!) overboard “in sympathy” too.

6. In Ticao Bowl, Masbate while diving for mantas, we noticed that this outrigger boat seemed to be shadowing us. The fisherman looked like he was just going about his usual business. Most of the time, he lay on his boat, probably waiting for a tug on his lines or movement in his net.

As we chatted in between dives, one of the crew noticed activity, just beneath the water's surface, at a short distance. The local divemaster excitedly said that it could be a manta.

The fisherman and his banca suddenly leapt to life, quickly motoring off to that area. We actually saw him threw a harpoon into the water. We screamed. One of the divers, shouting obscenities throughout, pulled out a gun and fired shots in the air (which was scary in itself; he turned out to be a local law enforcer). We were relieved to see the fisherman pull the harpoon out of the water with nothing stuck at the end.

That this fisherman (from another town, the local DM was sure) trailed us knowing that we were here for the mantas (that divers unwittingly bring danger to what we love) was a sobering realization!

7. Finally, imagine us, four females just surfaced from Monad Shoal, waiting by the side of the outrigger boat for our turn to climb up the ladder. Every now and then, we'd plant our masked faces back into the water to locate just where a jellyfish was in reference to us. We were of course convinced that it kept getting nearer. There were screams. Fins were getting to ssed back into the boat. There was a mad scramble up.

Non-divers still rib us on the idea that on that very trip, we "bravely" sought out

and found our toothy thresher sharks but went jelly on the knees and girly-girly over this small creature that really, was at the mercy of where the currents took it.

But then again, someone who I thought was my friend had to point out (a parallel contradiction): they already know that I don't mind, say, rapelling over the side of a ship (an adventure race dare) but I have to be escorted across Manila's streets!