An adventure begins: Pure Perfection, 18 November 2010

4th Wedding Anniversary
Anilao, Mabini, Batangas
Crystal Blue Resort

This year we celebrated our 4^th Wedding Anniversary at Anilao, Mabini, Batangas City. It’s very well known for one of the best diving sites in Luzon. They didn’t disappoint!

Our day began at 5am, yes that’s right…all to beat the traffic! Amazingly enough we did get there with little trouble…hired a car with a driver (yes, very posh) for very little P1k + P500 petrol + P150 in tolls and arrived at our destination around 830am.

Upon arriving at our resort our poor driver had to navigate through what could only best described as a footpath instead of a road. A very steep one at that!

On arrival we surveyed our temporary home for the next 3 days, the first thing I noticed, it must have an awesome view of the ocean! It was simple but cosy…it felt homey.

First thing was first, breakfast please!

After breakfast we thought to plan our day for the rest of our stay, number one on our list was a definitely a dive!

Our introductory dive which comes with all the equipment and master diver to accompany us only cost us P2500 each and we had 1hr each! Bargain I say!

I was so excited with the prospect of a dive that it didn’t really matter there was no TV in our room…that was fine since we had aircondtioning and a marvellous view of the ocean and stunning sunsets.

Day 2 Our dive

Excited but a little nervous about what I will actually see underwater, we had our dive at 10am offshore. We literally just had to walk in from our resort!

Now do you understand my worry? I look like an appetizing entree for a shark

Rom asked me if I wanted to go first, so I figured yes I wanted to get this nervous feeling out of the way!

I was so nervous about the mouthpiece getting away from me, I held onto it for dear life! Apart from my very healthy imagination of encountering sharks and lord knows what else that lives under the sea!

The first thing I saw on descent...coral as far as you could see in all it’s glorious colours. The deeper I went the more excited I got, saw so many different tropical fish, visited nemo up close and personal in his home, saw this shrimp looking thing and I kept thinking…you would be so nice in garlic butter hehehe, hey I'm a Pinay of course I think of food!

I went deeper and saw trevally, red snapper and before I realised it my hour was over and I had to head back up. I asked how far we went down, 32 feet…quite an achievement and I told Rom, we are going again tomorrow at a different site! I was certainly determined to go 50 feet.

Day 3 Seeing Twin Rocks and Picnic @ an isolated beach

We were so excited at the prospect of going to a different site for our dive, it was called Twin Rocks. Rom went first for an hour, he came up and said that I would definitely love it! He went down at 55 feet! He wasn’t wrong!

My turn :)

Talk about traffic underwater, there were so many divers at this site, most taking photos that I had to watch where I was going. Off in the distance I saw a school of trevally/jacks…they looked pretty tiny but as soon as we descended they were definitely much bigger than I thought. I had a ‘national geographic’ or ‘discovery’ moment when I sat down amongst the school and look up to see them swimming around and above me – it was surreal.

I saw 2 bat fish, those freaky looking fish they are huge! I was really fascinated with the different coloured sea slugs they were so cute. Now I knew why they called it twin rocks, when you get down to 50 feet there are 2 very large opposing rocks all filled with multiple soft corals, giant clams. The coral was just amazing so full of colour…I wish I had an underwater camera!

Now going around 50feet you don’t really notice how deep you are until you look up and see the almost perfect 80 degree drop from the top to bottom and there’s still more to go!

Because I was getting so carried away with the scenery, I decided to look into this rock…guess what the hell came out to greet me…a freakin’ eel! I almost yelped with surprise, but I think it was more scared of me than I with it.

There were so many starfish, orange, blue, red and I kept seeing nemo everywhere.

I was definitely hooked! I told Rom once I went back up that we are getting certified!

After the dive, you certainly work up an appetite, having the boat all to ourselves we were taken to paradise…a stretch of white sandy beach and azure waters to have our seafood picnic.

We had freshly caught tuna, garlic butter prawns, turon (banana with caramel) and wine! I asked myself whilst looking upon this view…