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Article by: Wolfgang Dafert
A new Destination in the World of Freediving– The Philippines
Time for a Change
Do you still like Dahab? If yes - be happy and enjoy your time. I was visiting Dahab already since 2003 for diving and deep dive training a lot of times. Great place, great diving, perfect training conditions, good community, … . But one day sitting in the jeep coming back from the Blue Hole I thought: “That’s it? 32 years old , and spending all your holidays travelling to the same destination year after year?” It’s time for a change. Still in Dahab I realized that being single and having just finished a big project job gives me a lot of freedom. Freedom I should use. Living in a landlocked country like Austria made the decision easy: Living and working a year or more on the seaside to have more time for diving. But this time for sure not Dahab again.
Let’s Go – But Where?
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A quick review of the book “Fifty Places to Dive Before You Die” was the spark plug for my search. This inspirational book also made me realize how few time I have left on this planet to see all these beautiful places. So I had no time to loose. Factors like -English speaking - Year round warm water diving – Undamaged underwater life - Possibility to work – narrowed the search to a couple of destinations. After a quick meeting with a friend of a friend a decision was done: The Philippines! Last thing to check: Where the hell are the Philippines? | |
No Rules Scuba Diving
Only 2 weeks after this decision i landed on the Philippine island of Cebu. It was my first time on the Asian continent. Well actually it didn’t feel much like a continent, because the Philippines is an archipelago of 7107 islands. No land borders to any other Asian country. Just sea all around – so I would rather call it a “sealocked” country. Good, very good because that’s basically the reason why I am here.
My start for socializing was a small napkin in my hand with telephone numbers of people I never met before. It was all local divebuddies from the Austrian friend of a friend who comes here every year. Being a complete stranger to them I first had a hard time just calling them, but finally overcame my European shyness, which proofed to be a good decision. They invited me right away joining their Sunday SCUBA dive trip. Being a PADI Scuba instructor I will never forget this experience. I never felt such freedom and fun before in my SCUBA diving carreer. Why? It felt like going on a family weekend trip. A boat full of Wives and Husbands, food, card games, food and then not to forget: more food. First I thought we drive to some remote islands and bring the local poor people food, but to my surprise the trip was solely a divetrip, with some snacks in between. The diving was great. After, before or just in between 2 snacks and when you felt the time is right one only has to stand up, wait for the staff to bring you the preassembled SCUBA gear and jump into the water. No planning. No Rules. Just diving.
Madness takes it's toll; please have exact change |
Before considering moving to the Philippines one should know that it is a very emotional country. People don’t think very rational, they just do things. We just talk about living like there is no tomorrow. Here people live that way. It makes life easy, but also sometimes hard for the still too western mind dealing with it. Just two examples: Why do all these motorcycles go such a long way to the next gas station and then just buy – 50 Peso or roughly 1liter of gasoline. | |
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Freediving – Small and big things The Philippines is part of the Coral Triangle a region with over 600 reef-building coral species which encompasses 75 percent of all species known in the world. (Wikipedia) The Country is a wonderland especially for people who like makro staff, like the small Pygmy Seahorse in the center of the picture below. Found it? One has to get used to this type of diving – you can spend half a day on a 1 square meter area of corals and you find creatures you never saw before in your life. And if it suddenly gets darker underwater look above you – maybe it’s a Whaleshark cruising above you. But you have to be lucky to see one of these majestic creatures that can grow up to 11m in length. You don’t have to be so lucky at all to see turtles in just in front of my new home, because there are plenty. My record is seeing 12 Turtles during 2 hours of diving. |
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Besides all the diving I also do lots of traveling and outdoor explorations. One of the best travel experiences was a trip with 2 friends of mine to the nearby Micronesian Island of Palau.
A way back on top of the food chain
Since more Freedivers get interested in it too: Yes we spearfish here in the Philippines. And it’s more fun than going to the supermarket for a can of tuna and less damaging for the fish stock. What I find especially challenging: Open water hunting. That’s where you go out in the blue and go for the bigger fish like Tuna, Jackfish, Wahoo. It’s a strange feeling when you hang for the first time in “nowhere” and 360 degree of deep blue around you with the anticipation of bigger fish to come close.
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Blue Water Hunting Frequent Flyer and Frequent Visitor – The Flying Fish Austrian Playboy Herbert Nitsch was also here in Cebu already 4 times in the last 2 years - hunting chicks at nighttime and fish at daytime. There are not much places on this planet like Cebu City where you can find both of them so close to shore. The deep drop offs just start 15-50m away from shoreline, and some of the bars can be found just a couple of meters on the other side of the shoreline. But there are also other activities we did together with Herbert here. Just recently we had lots of fun playing a fairly new but growing sport: Airsoft. It’s different than Paintball, but not less fun - only less pain. So much from the Philippines and maybe see you on the beach. |
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Freediving-Philippines: 1st Philippine Freediving School
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