Philippines - Our Arrival & First Day

I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving with friends and family! Carlton and I spent the week in the Philippines and really enjoyed ourselves. Yes, there is a lot of poverty in the area and there is a lot of pollution as well. But we spent the first four days on Cebu Island in Cebu City which was definitely nicer than Manila. The pollution was not nearly as bad and Mactan Island (which is connected to Cebu Island) has a lot of resorts due to their beautiful beaches and great scuba diving.

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.

Selfie on our plane from Manila to Cebu.

Airport in Cebu.

View from our hotel room. Of course McDonald's.

View from rooftop deck.

Infinity pool

Lounging selfie

Sunset from the rooftop deck

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.

Our breakfast buffet to get the day started!

Plenty of food!!

Shangri-la Resort - very fancy

Ready for the holidays

Guitar display

The Spa

Heli pad - someone needed it!

Our boat for the day!

Near our first dive spot

This will be our stop for lunch later

Good to go!

Funky black sea plant

Cool coral

Funny remora that kept following us

Big group of Jackfish

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.

Cool coral with a blue fringe

Scuba portrait!

Our lunch stop - restaurant is over the water.

Other side of the island - very pretty!

Lighthouse of sorts

In case you don't know where you are

Our view from our table at lunch.

Marinaded seaweed salad - very good!!

Carlton smells something fishy!! 

Carlton got this shot.

Lots of great coral

More coral with tiny fish.

More Jackfish

Nudibranch! Only a couple inches long.

Another Nudibranch also about 2 inches long.

And another one!!

Beautiful fish!

Can you spot the Grouper?

More of Nemo's cousins!

Bubble Coral!

Yet another Nudibranch! This one was about 3 inches long.

Scorpion fish!

Here's a video of the scorpion fish too!

More interesting fish.

Bright pink!

Our friendly remora again.

Here he is under Carlton!

Our dive master and Jackfish

Close-up!

Swim, swim, swim!

Beautiful coral!

Not sure if this is also Bubble Coral?

Cool formations

FISH!

Another Scorpion fish

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! :-)

Jungle Cruise!

Sorry for the long break between posts but the past couple of weeks have been filled with every day life normalcy peppered with some illnesses. Turns out that a submarine and a preschool have a lot in common in regards to passing around germs. Carlton has had the norovirus and Foot and Mouth over the past 2-3 weeks. So we have not been out exploring much due to illness and also his work schedule.

This weekend we joined a group from the boat and checked out the Jungle Cruise that is available (for tourists). There were about 20 of us, so we got to charter our own boat and enjoy a lovely cruise on the Talofofo River.

Our view as we left the dock

Part of the tour includes stopping at the site of an ancient Chamorro Village where you can still see the latte stones they used for structural support.

Shows the latte stones actually holding up the structure

Ancient latte stones

Replica of ancient structure

Our group!!

Of course we had to do a group photo in front of the structure! The tour continued with a walk along a path showing the various foliage in the area.

I used to have one of these as a house plant!

More latte stones

Banana spider-very common and harmless

Fire pit

Then we were directed to an educational area where there were a couple women weaving various items from palm fronds. Our guide also demonstrated how the people used to start fires and how they used coconuts and fire for insect repellent. One of our guys decided to try to start a fire as well and was able to get some smoke while being mercilessly harassed by all of us about going faster and harder. The other tourists and employees joined in on the heckling as well! Reshard took it all in stride...he is a sailor, so he's used to being pestered by his co-workers.

She's using her toes to hold the palm.

Fruit basket

Our guide making a fire

Working it harder!

Coconut insect repellent

Reshard trying it out

Getting a little smoke

Baby monitor lizards

We proceeded to get back on the boat for more cruising.

Traffic jam on the river

The kayak river cruise

At our turnaround point, we paused to feed the fish. Not sure if you can see them in the picture but they are stick fish (about 4-6 inches long) and they were a few catfish in the area too. They love their white bread! We also saw a couple crabs on the shore but couldn't get a picture.

It was a lovely excursion and we had a lot of fun!!

Our next adventure is going to be in the Philippines. We are heading there for our Thanksgiving getaway! We will be staying on Cebu Island for a few days and then checking out Manila for a couple days before heading back home. We are looking forward to scuba diving around Cebu and checking out the various sights in both areas. We should have plenty of pictures from that upcoming trip!!

I know it's early but I will say Happy Thanksgiving to you all now! Not sure how much we will be online while we are gone, so I hope you all have a wonderful holiday with your families and friends!!

XOXOXO