We arrived at our hotel in Cebu City early in the afternoon, so we just wandered a bit and lounged by the infinity pool that was on the rooftop deck.
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| Selfie on our plane from Manila to Cebu. |
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| Airport in Cebu. |
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| View from our hotel room. Of course McDonald's. |
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| View from rooftop deck. |
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| Infinity pool |
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| Lounging selfie |
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| Sunset from the rooftop deck |
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| Happy Hour! |
Our first full day we scheduled a scuba diving trip which included two dives off the coast of two different islands near Mactan Island. So we had to take a taxi to the Shangri-La resort on Mactan to get to the dive shop. It was not that far but with traffic it took about an hour. The driving is a bit crazy there...cars have a tendency to straddle lane lines and vehicles are constantly passing each other while motorbikes/scooters are weaving in between vehicles. Everyone honks regularly; honk to pass, honk to make pedestrians move, honk to let a vehicle know you are moving into his lane, honk to make the motorbike move over so a vehicle can use the same lane, honk at pedestrians crossing in front of traffic when the light is green, etc.
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| Our breakfast buffet to get the day started! |
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| Plenty of food!! |
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| Shangri-la Resort - very fancy |
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| Ready for the holidays |
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| Guitar display |
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| The Spa |
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| Heli pad - someone needed it! |
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| Our boat for the day! |
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| Near our first dive spot |
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| This will be our stop for lunch later |
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| Good to go! |
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| Funky black sea plant |
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| Cool coral |
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| Funny remora that kept following us |
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| Big group of Jackfish |
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| Nemo! Or at least his cousins. |
This video shows a couple clown fish protecting their anemone home. They are very protective and seem to want to charge at Carlton as he is filming!
The second video is clown fish again - these get a little closer! I think Carlton likes to see how close they will get to him.
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| Cool coral with a blue fringe |
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| Scuba portrait! |
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| Our lunch stop - restaurant is over the water. |
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| Other side of the island - very pretty! |
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| Lighthouse of sorts |
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| In case you don't know where you are |
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| Our view from our table at lunch. |
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| Marinaded seaweed salad - very good!! |
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| Carlton smells something fishy!! |
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| Carlton got this shot. |
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| Lots of great coral |
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| More coral with tiny fish. |
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| More Jackfish |
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| Nudibranch! Only a couple inches long. |
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| Another Nudibranch also about 2 inches long. |
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| And another one!! |
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| Beautiful fish! |
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| Can you spot the Grouper? |
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| More of Nemo's cousins! |
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| Bubble Coral! |
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| Yet another Nudibranch! This one was about 3 inches long. |
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| Scorpion fish! |
Here's a video of the scorpion fish too!
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| More interesting fish. |
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| Bright pink! |
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| Our friendly remora again. |
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| Here he is under Carlton! |
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| Our dive master and Jackfish |
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| Close-up! |
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| Swim, swim, swim! |
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| Beautiful coral! |
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| Not sure if this is also Bubble Coral? |
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| Cool formations |
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| FISH! |
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| Another Scorpion fish |
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| More Nemo's but wearing tuxedos! |
And that was the end of our first day! We had a great time...stay tuned for the next blog covering more of our trip! :-)
