PART X - Japan And Philippines
Unexpected, expected, great and plain annoying things happened in June. While the first Tubbataha trip was a bust due to the typhoon in the area, the second time actually worked out and I got to see the beautiful protected reefs - a UNESCO world heritage site - for the first time. The most striking feature in my opinion are the absolutely gorgeous sea fans that are present on most dives and can grow to ridiculous sizes. That you can also find them in relatively shallow water is surprising, given that Tubbataha is closed for tourism for most of the year due to getting hammered by weather. The most surprising thing though happened at the ranger station, where I ran into two friends from an expedition a long time ago. The diving world really is rather small. On the “less fun'“ side of things, during my week at Tubbataha BOTH my remaining strobes broke. One developed a fault in the power cable, rendering it useless, while the second one - that I had bought seven weeks earlier as a emergency replacement - simply felt like filling up with water was a good idea. Not from the battery compartment either, but from the end containing the sensitive electronics. So, instead of staying out on the reefs for another week I raced back to land to get Gary to bring his strobes from Switzerland for me, for the next part of the trip. Which is why I still managed to do photography. Seeing as Puerto Princesa is not the place I want to stay in for any longer period of time I changed my flight and went to join Jessica in Japan a week earlier, which was an outstandingly great decision. I loved every second there, turns out that not suffering from acute burnout changes my outlook on countries. Great food, lovely people, beautiful nature. Kenroku-en, the garden in Kanazawa, is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to. After that the diving crew flew back to the Philippines and we finally joined a trip that was originally planned in 2020. But something happened and we couldn’t go? I don’t remember the details… We went out to Tubbataha, then tried diving Cagayancillo (failure, they didn’t want to allow us to dive), Guimaras (success after a loooong wait, but not great visibility unfortunately), Malapascua (huge success, lots of thresher sharks!), Ticao (meh, Manta Bowl without mantas…), Romblon (massive success, holy moly is that place crazy with rare nudibranch!), Marinduque (success, exploratory dives that were very good and turned out to contain half the genus of Phyllodesmium) and finally Anilao.
Enough rambling, enjoy the images!
p.s.: Tubbataha backwards reads Ahatabbut. Or also: ‘AHA! THE BUTT!’
