We flew through the night and arrived in Manila in the early hours. We found the free transfer shuttle bus and transferred to the domestic terminal for our 6am flight to Cebu.
After landing in Cebu we caught a taxi to the south bus terminal. It is not that far but the traffic was bad. Quite usual for the Philippine cities. We couldn't pay the taxi as he had no change. We all tried to find someone who could break the money down and eventually we found someone. The taxi went on his way and we went to eat.
A little cafe was serving set meals, so we ate there and the meals were tasty. We had two different ones but they both had sweet pork meat and rice.
From the southern bus terminal we caught the Ceres bus south to Moalboal. The journey took about 2.5 hours and we arrived in the busy little town. Our first stop was the supermarket to buy a few essentials. We also ate again at a local stall. This time we had 2 veggie dishes. There was also a McDonalds and a ramen restaurant in Moalboal but we resisted!
Lots of tricycle drivers were touting for business, hoping to take people down to Pangasama beach, 3km away. We opted to walk to the beach which took about 45 minutes. The beach area has gone through a lot of expansion. New hotels and restaurants are everywhere. There are now many Chinese day trippers that come and go on tours too.
We dropped our bags at our hostel near the beach front, donned our masks and snorkels and in the sea we went.
Plenty of nice healthy coral here, lots of fish and loads of turtles. We swam amongst a shoal of millions of sardines that reside on the the reef. As we passed through they closed in behind us and we were totally surrounded by so many fish!
After drying off we walked around the beach area looking for food. We settled on a small restaurant serving tacos before completing a loop back to our hostel.
Now we are in the Philippines we are going to be spending most of our time following a daily routine.
Breakfast
Snorkelling
Lunch
Snorkelling
Dinner
Bed
We will report back anything we see underwater that is a little unusual!
Yesterday the locals told us a whale shark was spotted swimming along the reef at Moalboal. Sadly we missed it. There was also a huge pod of dolphins swimming out beyond the reef but we missed them too! Seeing them would have been a great start to our Philippines adventure.
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