About 45 minutes later, I set foot on Malapascua, a tiny island with a circumference of just about 6km. The island lives almost entirely on tourism, and accordingly the main beachfront consists of a quick succession of hotels, dive centers and restaurants. Small paths lead inland to collections of huts housing the Filipino population. Malapascua is so small that there are no cars on it, no post office, and no ATMs - the closest ATM is about two hours away (!).
The biggest attraction of Malapascua island are its spectacular dive sites, and so I decided to do my Advanced Open Water Diver certification here. Someone had recommended a specific dive center to me, and so - after finding a hotel and checking in - I went there to check it out. The dive center was reasonably priced (not cheap, but not super expensive either), and the people seemed really nice and fun. So I quickly signed up for the course, and started with the first of five dives in the afternoon.
The dive was all about controlling buoyancy underwater and involved tasks like swimming through a small-ish square without getting stuck:
We also had plenty of time to look at underwater life. Since effective buoyancy control means that you do not use your hands to steer where you're swimming, I got to fool around with my instructor's underwater camera for most of the dive to keep my hands otherwise occupied. That's how this lovely shot came to be, showing anemonefish, or clownfish, looking out of their sea anemone homes:
Between diving, reading the required sections in the coursebook, and completing the assignments therein, there was almost no time to admire the lovely white beach with its blue waters and palm trees that would be my home for the next three days:
