Sea blur—the underwater world as a blur.
While making just coffee for breakfast because that’s all I have left, I realized I’m perfectly content living the simple life I’m living. I don’t miss any of the luxuries I had back in the US. I’m living a much more carefree life with little stress with the exception of the IDC/IE. Simple is good with a lot less to worry about. Today, I planned on doing a few fun dives at Asia Divers which would be my last dives while out here in Puerto Galera.
Giant clams at the "Hills."
Gorgonian sea fan.
Colorful tunicate.
I didn’t want to go on any of the 9 AM dives so Grace and I settled on diving at 11:30 AM with Alli and a few others at the “Hills” dive site. We didn’t see too many new things but I did see a waspfish, devil scorpionfish, several nudibranchs, boxer shrimp, and a family of clownfish who were so defensive one of them bit me. Grace and I got separated from the rest of the group so we just explored at our own pace. We ended up taking a little too long underwater and surfaced 20 minutes after the rest of the group. Oops.
For my last dive in Puerto Galera, I dived with Alli, Grace and Lee who is revisiting Puerto Galera from a business trip to Taiwan. It was my first time diving with Lee even though I’ve hung around him for at least a month. Our dive group was quite experienced—three instructors and a Divemaster candidate. We decided to do the dive at 2:30 PM at the “Boulders” dive site which I’ve never dived before. Alli said she would try to find the pygmy sea horse and ribbon eel that are sometimes found in the area. I was excited to see a new site and potentially an eel I’ve never seen before.
Shortly after our descent, the water temperature got a little chilly. After looking around the large round rock formations, Alli found the small pygmy sea horse on a sea fan. The sea horse was in a hard to reach position on the sea fan which made it difficult to take a good picture of it. This always happens to me with pygmy sea horses.
Shortly after seeing the pygmy sea horse and while swimming along the reef, Lee found a medium sized octopus in a hole. I was hoping it would come out of its hole but it never did. I heard Alli scream underwater as she pointed at a ribbon eel in a hole. It was amazing to see but was also hard to photograph because it would go back in its hole when I tried taking a picture of it. Sometime later, Alli screamed again out of excitement as she was pointing at a turtle eating something in the sand underwater.
It was truly amazing to be able to swim up to and lay within a few feet of a turtle on the sea floor. It noticed me taking pictures but ignored me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get into the best position to take a picture of it because I didn’t want to get in the way of Grace taking pictures nor did I want to scare it away. After some chewing and swallowing, it calmly raised up, turned, and swam away. In addition to the amazing things we saw underwater, we also saw some anemone shrimp, a black lionfish next to another lionfish with colorful fan-like fins, and nudibranchs. The dive ended as my last but best dive in Puerto Galera; a truly amazing experience.
After cleaning up and leaving my dive gear out to dry, I went back to my room to journal a little bit. In the evening, I went to Point bar to meet up with Grace, Maziar, and Vergie because we planned on going out for a nice steak dinner at La Laguna Beach Club Resort. After some drinks, we walked over to the resort to have dinner.
At the resort, we ordered some drinks and food. I ordered a rump steak cooked “rare” but had to make sure they cooked it even less than last time. I told them “More blood please!” Last time I ordered steaks with Warren and Greg they were all overcooked where my “rare” steak was cooked well done. The girl I ordered from said the reason why they were overcooked was because they cooked more on the sizzling platter they’re served on. I told her, “well, compensate!”
The best damn steak I've had in Philippines.
Thankfully, my steak arrived what I would call “medium rare“ with a slight hint of blood. Despite being slightly overcooked, I enjoyed my steak tremendously; it was the best steak I’ve eaten in the Philippines and reminded me of the steaks I used to grill at home in the US. An excellent last dinner with my good friends in Puerto Galera. After dinner, we went back to the Point bar for a few more drinks and then I went home.
- jason
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