More of Malapascua

Above is our room.  The boys shared one bed in their room and Ashley had a single bed in there too.  I took NO pictures the whole time we were there until our last morning.  Our room was QUITE a hike from the beach and dive shop and the last afternoon when we could not dive anymore I was planning to wander and take pictures, especially some of the kids playing on the beach, it rained-really hard.

So below are pictures of our last morning there.  We all got shirts with these thresher sharks on them.  Greg and I got up at 4:30 in the morning, 3 days in a row to go out to the dive site to see these.

Day 1-boat guys were running a little late, the small boat's motor wasn't working so it was slow to get out to the big dive boat.  Then the big boat's motor hit a rock and the propeller got bent so by the time we could have gotten to the dive site the sharks would have been gone :(

Day 2-larger group of divers, they were running more late loading gear-still working with little boat with motor not working :)  We got to the dive site late-the sun was already coming up and we were already geared up and they practically shoved us off the boat.  We saw 2 sharks and one of them was pretty far away.  There were TONS of other fish at this site that we enjoyed seeing but we were sad to have missed the sharks..

from wikipedia about where we were-
Perhaps the most popular SCUBA diving destination near Malapascua is Monad Shoal, a natural cleaning station for fish located about 20 minutes from the island. The shoal is a rather unremarkable. There is little in the way of coral on the top of the seamount which is swept by a strong current.
The site is best known as the only place in the world where thresher sharks can be seen regularly before sunrise. They use the seamount as a cleaning station for wrasse to remove parasites from their skin and clean their gills and mouths.

Day 3-we finally got there on time, in spite of the little boat's motor still having trouble-the guy rowed with a bamboo pole-not very fast moving!  We got to see 6 or 8 sharks circling around, being cleaned by the other fish.  The largest was longer than our Suburban including his tale.  It was really cool.  These are very calm, non-aggressive sharks.  All the ones (of any type) we have ever seen diving are either hiding under rocks, in caves, or are swimming away from us.

We went on one night dive which was fun-got to see mandarin fish-which apparently are not common in many places-they are small but very colorful.  We saw seahorses for the first time EVER diving which was very fun.  As we told the kids, night dives are like playing detective and hunting for treasures since most of the animals are hiding by them.  

The kids playing spot it-a great card game gift from Aunt Ann last Christmas while we finished packing

This is the view off our balcony-trees and sidewalks.  I had planned to get some pictures from the porch of Ms. Dali's house, where the kids loved to play while we were diving and they were not on the beach but ran out of time.  She had a cute little nipa hut with a gorgeous view of the beach and ocean, but we had a/c

Upstairs from the dive shop was the restaurant we ate in

What should we have for breakfast today

The dive shop-the people there were REALLY nice!

Chocolate chip starfish that Scott and Ryan carried in for Ashley to see-they had booties to wear on their feet so they walked out from the edge of the water where it was rocky and got SUPER excited about counting starfish and showing us.  Ryan and Ashley even counted how many chocolate chips one starfish had. 

I had dreams of making this a cute Christmas card picture but someone was squinting or had eyes closed or a hand in front of their face in all the ones I took!

Our Philippine children playing soccer with coconuts!

The dive shop's shirts were really neat!

Loading up the little boat to go out diving

Saying goodbye to Angus-he was talking to Ryan-he was Scott's instructor and was terrific-I will make another post about his dive

Ashley and Ms. Dali

On the boat going back to Cebu

a pretty building near the dive shop

another nearby resort-Malapascua is such a diving place that through the dive shop we used, they book the dive package you want and THEN they will handle where you want to stay for you-what is the most important part of your vacation?

Ashley burst into tears on the boat and we didn't know why-she said that she was sad to leave Malapascua!  The kids do this to us every time we go somewhere-they say it was so fun-can we come back here again?????  I told them that was the problem with the Philippines, there are too many pretty places to see and visit so we probably will not come back again!

Views out the window on the ride back

People powered tricycles-ours was one of the few cars on the road-a few buses, many motorcycles, and tricycles

Ashley spent a long time "talking to Grammy" on her pink phone, so then Greg made a recording on his phone of all the kids telling their favorite parts of our trip.

About this time our camera battery died and we realized that I had left the extra one at the house in Manila.  Greg took us to a nice mall in Cebu where we had lunch, bought some souvenirs, and walked around a little before going to the airport to fly back to Manila.  When we got back to our house, we ate a quick dinner and put kids to bed since everyone had school the next day.  It was a great trip!