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Go to it! Home About Me! Where Am I? Travels My Soapbox Amuse Yourself Zap Me! Other Places Other Places I've been to in the Philippines Pagsanjan Falls Subic Bay Villa Escudero Back To Top Copyright © 1998-2001 by Eric Mah. All rights reserved.

Travels --> Scuba Diving Scuba Diving! There are plenty of great scuba diving spots here in the Philippines. Since I don't have an underwater camera I can't show you all just how beautiful and diverse life under the ocean surface is. Believe me, it's a totally different, spectacular world. On my very first dive, I couldn't believe the diversity and mulitude of lifeforms I saw. Every square centimeter of rock or sand that I saw, literally had some sort of life, be it coral, fish, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, or starfishes. Those Jacque Cousteau Underwater Specials that I watched every Sunday evening as a youngster does not do justice to the beauty that lies just 10 feet under the ocean surface! Below are some pictures that were taken on a scuba diving trip on December 6 th to a place called Santa Cruz, about 2 hours north of Subic Bay. This was the first time we dived at this place. Unfortunately, much of the coral and underwater life was buried and subsequently destroyed by the volcanic ash from the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. A lot of new coral growth was spotted but the marine ecosystem will require a lot of time to attain its once spectacular state. On the road at 7 a.m. Unlike traveling to Manila, this streach of road heading north from Subic Bay was practically bare of any traffic and the road was straight and well maintained. Some pretty nice rustic scenery along the way too! This is a speargun made by one of the local people of the area we dived at. The fishing implement was pieced together out of scrap wood and scrap metal and some elastic bands. The diving fin to the right, too, is a homemade item consisting of cutout plywood and some rubber, probably from an old inner tube. I also saw someone wearing a pair of homemade goggles that were carved out of wood with plastic lenses. It's pretty ingenious how people here can get by with what's at hand. It's not that these people make these items because they want to have fun swimming or catching fish as a recreation but because they use these tools as a means to earn a living. Sometimes people in more developed countries should learn from others in developing areas of the world how to be more resourceful and make do with what they already have instead of squandering away any more of the earth's natural resouces. Waiting to push off. Here we're waiting for the boatmen to start up their boats and take us to a little island about 4 kilometers off shore. Finally, we're off! All suited up and read to go! Recreational scuba diving isn't really all that technical a matter. You have bascially seven pieces of basic equipment: a bouyancy control device (BCD, a vest-like device which helps control your bouyancy); a regulator (the piece you actually breath out of); an air tank; fins; goggles; and a weight belt to help keep you down under. At first, I thought learning to use scuba equipment would be a long a difficult road. But actually, when everything is working properly, all you have to do is put in the mouth piece and breath! Of course, you still must go through a scuba diving certification course to learn the proper techniques of safe scuba diving before you can legally dive, but once you have the knowledge and basic training done, it's a snap! One of the best parts of a scuba diving trip is eating! Scootering around in the ocean like a fish for a few hours can really make you hungry. Here we are enjoying a scrumptious meal of roasted fish and squid and taro that we bought at a local open air market we passed on our way here. The great thing about it was that we bought enough food and condiments to stuff about 10 people (including the boatmen) for less than 25 U.S. dollars! Believe me, the fish we roasted was delicious!