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| | | | | Freediving & Spearfishing in the Philippines by John Doas | | | My wife and I arrived at Cebu City at the beginning of May - the hottest time of year in the Philippines. On arrival you usually need to make your way to Moalboal by taxi or hotel minibus. Thankfully, however, Wolfgang's friend [Christoph] was very generously offered to pick us up from the airport and drive us to Moalboal.
The actual journey to Moalboal was really beautiful. The route had windy roads covered by dense jungle on either side. As we crossed Cebu from East to West we ascended up the mountains where the views were spectacular.
Eventually we arrived at www.clubserenaresort.com where we had already booked the room. Our “tree house” room was absolute luxury. It was clean, very well presented, and had a 360 degree view of the surrounding vicinity. At Club Serena we met Wolfgang who would be my free dive trainer and later take me further out from Moalboal to go spearfishing.
In the evening my wife and I ate in the restaurant, which was absolutely fantastic. The ambience was relaxing and the menu had both Pilipino and European cuisine on offer. After dinner we stayed in the restaurant where I got out my laptop to finish some urgent work I had to do for my business. Prior to our departure I had rented an internet data card from http://www.adamphones.com which allowed me to stay connected to the office. Sounds sad but thankfully I soon finished what I needed to do and sent the report back to the office.
The next day Christoph, Wolfgang and I did deep dive training which involved descending on a thick rope to the deep depths of the ocean without oxygen. Initially the bottomless deep blue of the sea is very intimidating. However, after a while you soon forget about the depths and what lies beneath and just chilled out. I managed to do 23 meters which was okay considering I had not done this before. With a little more practice I could have probably done a lot more. Later on we then did static training in the pool. This involves breathing exercises and then trying to hold your breath for as long as possible. I managed 4.02 minutes which I was pleased with. The whole day was excellent and I particularly commend the lads for the safety procedures.
The following day we set out on our spearfishing trip. Have a look at the video of the day out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLLUedsGEAI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp_-mtAiYnE&feature=email
The person behind the camera is my lovely wife. To find the place the guys borrowed my BlackBerry phone which has GPS (see: http://www.airtimemanager.co.uk ). The place was really in the back and beyond so without this device we would have been totally lost.
Once we arrived at our destination we got into our wet suites and finally hit the water around 13.00. 5hrs later we finally exited the water! The area we went was really nice. We were spearfishing just off the coral reef, about 100 meters from shore, where the water drops off to deep ocean. There were a lot of fish but nothing much that took our interest. I managed to shoot a decent sized Parrot fish, Christoph shot a King fish [I think] and Wolfgang shot a Travelly [amongst other things].
When we finally did leave the water my wife had food ready for us. She had befriended the locals whilst reading on the beach. They had cooked and fed her and just before we arrived they had cooked another meal for us.
All in all an excellent trip!
Please note: All the fish were dispatched in a very human way. Spearfishing is a very ecological method of catching fish because you can see the fish before you shoot. We don't use scuba and we don’t shoot too many fish. The fish that we do shoot are not protected and we eat what we catch.
| | | | Article Source : Article-treasure.com | | Publication date : 07-20-2008 | | | | Article by John Doas | | | | John | | | | Keywords : spearfishing, freediving, Philippines, cell phone rental, internet datacard rental | | | | | |
