Saturday, 20 February, 2016 Rakiraki, Fiji 6:30 AM The alarm goes off half an hour earlier than yesterday. Yesterday some of us laid in bed until the last possible minute and then realized that four of us are sharing a bathroom. That didn’t work out so well and the dive shop called us to see where we were before we were even late. So this morning we are determined to be early. We are so determined that no one is moving yet. My brain in moving. My body is not responding. 8:15 AM Fletch, Mikaila, Aaron, and myself are power walking the sandy, scenic path
Friday Planning our travels through the Philippines turned out to be a lot more difficult than I had thought it would be. With over 7000 islands, and each promising something unique and better than the last, it proved an impossible task to narrow the choices down enough to accommodate a 12 day schedule. Eventually we settled on four nights in Malapascua, four in Bohol, and four on Palawan (which honestly is a place deserving of 12 nights by itself). Everyone raved about Bohol. Between the beach, the zip-lining, the Chocolate hills, the Loboc river with its own assortment of activities, it
Wednesday They say to schedule at least half a day for any domestic traveling within the Philippines, if not a full day. They are not kidding. Definitely er on the side of a full day. We arranged to travel to Bohol from Malapascua with our Dutch friends, Ian and Suzanne. Suzanne was awesome and planned out the entire trip, from our transfer from the dive shop, to the ferry from Cebu to Bohol, to rooming arrangements. Some mention was made of staying at the Bee Farm, which I liked the idea of very much, having heard a lot about it, but
Monday We signed up for the early morning thresher shark dive again. Beautiful, cartoonish sharks with long, ribbony tails and big, puppy dog eyes were a good enough reason to drag my sleepy butt out of bed at 5am. We were late leaving because one of the guys didn’t show up to work, and as such most of the thresher sharks were already gone when we descended into the chilly water. We still saw enough to make the dive worth it, just not as many as the day before. Of course about halfway through the dive when I’d given up on
Sunday Evolution turned out to be a wonderful little gem of a dive resort. There were three main dive shops that Lonely Planet recommended we go through. Fletch did a nice job of emailing the three of them until we were able to narrow it down to Evolution Dive Resort. That was definitely a good call. The beach front room was everything you want in a room when you’re divining. A big, clean, comfortable bed, and an extra bed to lay out all your stuff on, a clean bathroom with a hot shower, and a little balcony to hang out wet