Philippines, Southern Visayas route with the Philippine Siren

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

Sounds like a fabulous trip - and a really good price! Especially for 10 days.

Whale shark and snake eel in hole? Amazing! Did you find your smaller subjects yourself, or have a divemaster find for you? My vision isn't good enough to find half the stuff a good divemaster can.

With the small stuff, it was probably 70% dive guide, 30% myself - often enough I would have no idea what I'm actually looking at until the guide pointed it out.

There were actually multiple different snake eels - here's a crocodile one:

What was your travel like (and cost) to get to the liveaboard? Did you have a cabin to yourself?

Tel Aviv -> Athens -> Doha -> Manila and back was $960 with Qatar Airways; Manila -> Cebu and back was $100 with Air Asia, including 30kg baggage allowance. I believe it's considerably less expensive getting to the Philippines from USA though.

Cabin was shared with another guy, but by liveaboard standards, it was a huge cabin - at least ten feet square, probably a bit more. En-suite bathroom too.

I've only been diving in the Pacific once, on a liveaboard in Fiji in 2009. That was $6000 (for two) for only 7 days, but it sure was a fabulous trip.

Also - what do you think caused your ear issues? More than 3 dives a day does put a premium on taking good care of them.

Not sure, probably just a cold - we were anchored off Dumaguete, and another diver was having similar trouble, so the cruise director (who was also not diving due to ear trouble) took us to an ear-throat-nose doctor at a hospital there. He prescribed an antibiotic and a decongestant and two days later I was able to equalize, albeit with some difficulty and a lot more frequently than I'm used to.