Treasure hunting

We spend last week in Dauin, a village between Dumaguete (the big city) and Zamboanguita (the probable MCP location). We are renting a moped so we can see something of the surrounding and stay at Bongo Bongo Divers, a nice place close to the beach.

Of course the renting of the moped did not entirely go as planned. We drove from Dumaguete to Dauin, and after a few kilometers I started to smell burned plastic. There was nothing wrong while driving, so we just continued. In the end, it turned out that the back brake was a bit stuck and during the 15 km drive we actually achieved in demolishing part of the brake. The smell was the rubber of the brake which was totally gone. Luckily, the shop found it no problem to drive over to our place and change the moped.

Today we drove to the Siit arboretum near Zamboanguita, which is one of the options for MCP's location, together with Soren and Helle, our future 'bosses'. It was nice to visit the location. It is very green, with a lot of trees and situated on the top of a small hill. That's also the more difficult part, because the see is 1-2 km downhill and part of the road needs some construction before we will be able to drive up and down all day with the volunteers and the dive gear.

We marked out the places were the huts for the volunteers and us should be build and now we are hoping that the constructor is indeed going to build two huts in the coming two weeks as he promised to do. It would be nice if he keeps his promise so that we can officially start with MCP, but of course you never know what's going to happen. If this will be MCP future location, we will be very nicely situated. The huts are in the middle of a large garden, with lots of (fruit) trees and it is in the middle of a rural area. Along the main 'highway' are a lot of rice fields and waterbuffalos and it is less populated the further you are from Dumaguete.

Dunaguete itself is a friendly city with a 100.000 inhabitants, a movie theater, a big supermarket with all the western necessities (yoghurt, muesli, cheese) and a mall with enough American restaurants when you do not want to eat rice or noodles for a change. Luckily, Filipinos eat bread as well, so there are plenty of bakeries, although the bread is mainly sweet.

We also did some diving near Dauin. The quality of the reefs is good, except for the parts hit by the typhoon Yolanda last year. Visibility is quite good, especially in the morning and certainly much better than the usual 5m in Cambodia. There are a lot of different fish and also large fish as well, which is an indicator that there is not much overfishing. Which is good, since this is a Marine Protected Area, which means that people can only fish in a sustainable way. No dynamite or cyanide fishing, or big trawlers which destroy the bottom with their nets. Also no particluar fish or invertebrate species who is dominating the area, which is also a sign of a healthy reef. In Cambodia the bottom was crowded with diadema sea urchins, but here you see them very little.

If we want to go diving, we can just grab a tank and walk into the water. The reef is only a small swim away. We also went to Apo Island, a famous place for diving in the Philippines and in viewing distance of where we stay. Unfortunately, half of the dive sites are destroyed by the typhoon, but the other half of the reef is still intact and beautiful with coral gardens and lots of fish and green turtles. I think we have broken our turtle record on one dive, because at one point every five minutes we saw another turtle.

Yesterday we went on an interesting quest. Supposedly, between Apo Island and the big island Mindanao there is a hidden shoal, an elevation of sand in the ocean. Very few people know it exists and supposedly it is very beautiful down there. Fisherman told (of course) different stories of the location, the depth and what you can catch here. A 100 kg grouper, for instance. Two local fisherman joined us on the boat and with 15 people we went looking if we could find this secret place. Including some rough navy maps with depth data Dolf was able to collect and 50 m of rope and 40 m of anchor line but without depth finder (stuck at customs in China) we started our exploration.

The first group went down on a location which was pointed out to us by a fisherman sitting in his small boat fishing in the middle of nowhere. After 55 m of descending they saw the bottom, but it was very deep. There was a slope going up though. Group 2 went down a bit further up the slope, we were part of the third group and still could not reach the bottom, because it was at 70m. The rest of the area is 300 m deep, so maybe we did find the shoal after all. No big fish or other interesting things to see of course.

It is interesting though to go down the anchor line into the 'blue nothing'. When you look up you can see much more compared to when you look down. 50m down, we were still able to see the rope of the anchor, all the way up to the surface. When you go down, you only start to see the bottom when you're more than 30 m down. It is beautiful to look up and only see the sun and the water. The anchor was drifting above the bottom however, and not touching the ground at all.

There was hardly any current and if you just continue to hold on to the anchor line going up and down and keep an eye on your computer it is perfectly safe to go down that deep. Because the rope is near you cannot get confused which side is up or down. Usually, it is not so interesting to do that because you can only stay that deep for not even a few minutes before you have to up again. On the way back we did another dive at Apo Island, to see at least some coral and fish.

For Magnus, the owner of the place were we are staying this was already attempt 2 for the treasure hunt. To be continued...