Snorkeling in the Philippines

Florence and I both like snorkeling and that's why we chose Boracay Island. But snorkeling really depends on the weather. At Boracay were there for 5 days and 4 nights, the first and last days are travel days so you have to hope that the snorkeling is good in the middle.

The first 2 days with overcast and cloudy, we tried snorkeling from the beach at Bailing Hai but the water wasn't clear. We signed up for a snorkeling tour on the third day the weather was sunny but the wind was strong. Here's the snorkeling boat. Notice the unstable gang plank on the way up into the boat.

These tours have about 20 people and they range from experts to beginners. It's hard for the tour operators to keep everyone happy. Some want to visit as many sites as possible. Others, like us, are just looking for easy fish viewing. And not everyone speaks good English, ... Anyway the day we went the wind was strong and the sites from the boat were pretty rough. I swallowed a lot of salt water.

I made the mistake of thinking all breathing tubes were the same and left my good one in the US. If you're going to go so far for snorkeling you got to bring good equipment with you.

The boat was "powered" by a diesel 4 cylinder car engine that could really put out the fumes. If it wasn't windy, we would have been all gassed. Luckily, the boatmen have other methods for compensating, every stop required a lot of poling with the ubiquitous bamboo.

The other maneuver was to use a "dead man's anchor" to get the boat off the shore. One time, a boat couldn't get off the island because of incoming waves and the under powered engine. So a crew member swims the anchor out beyond the reef and the other crew members pull the boat out to the anchor. Wow, tough job.

All in all, it was just too windy for us, more than 6 hours on the waves makes being a sailor not so glamorous.

But on the fourth day, the weather was sunny and without wind. Snorkeling from the beach at Bailing Hai was perfect. Clear, warm, plenty to see. We went 3 times that day and it made the trip a success. How lucky we were.