The following day we planned on taking Philippine Island Divers' larger dive bangka to Balicasag Island, a 30 minute trip from the Alona beach area. Even the local kids were having an adventure too!

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As I boarded the large dive bangka, once again one of the staffer girls from Bohol Divers came running out calling my name; “Mister Dave, did you forget this?!” She must have done that at least once a day holding up a dive glove, a spare battery, or some other essential item. She was really a sweetheart for always thinking about our dive experience, and I found that personal attention quite endearing. All the staff who stayed back at the dive shop always asked us how our dive went and what we saw. We always felt like we were one of the family sitting on the table in front of the shop drinking the cold drinks they would always offer and bring us after a dive.

Balicasag has just amazing water clarity, with half a dozen popular dive sites. The whole small island is encircled by a medium sloped coral reef structure. Some sites are known for regular barracuda cleaning stations under the right tide settings. On the frontside I saw several carpet anemones that were at least a meter in diameter, they were huge! I always scull my hand near the edges so any detached portion of the anemone might well up, often revealing hiding porcelain crabs.

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The above photo is what you will see when your bangka approaches Balicasag Island.

During our mandatory 1 hour break between dives, Randel and I jumped off the bangka dive boat and swam to shore. Now we were told the island management would extract a 100 or so peso fee for coming onto the island, but that didn’t happen. We had an outdoor lunch on the island cooled by the breeze while we watched smiling students from a hotelier trade school be put through their paces.

Now we had spied this tall aluminum lighthouse structure in the center of the island, so we walked to it and it was all enclosed with wire link fencing. We asked around, and we were told it was owned by the Philippines navy, and that a detachment was on the island somewhere having lunch. We were escorted around for about for 20 minutes looking for them, and we finally were introduced to the navy Captain and his mates. We told them we were producing a Pinas dive tourism promo video, and the next thing you knew, were were invited for lunch, which we had to decline as we were already stuffed to the gills from our previous lunch, but it is just another in a long list of instances of the type of warm hospitality you can expect from total strangers who after 1 minute are your friends. Permission was granted to enter the lighthouse, and we unlocked the water tight access bulkhead at the bottom and climbed several hundred feet up inside the aluminum lighthouse structure. The view from the top tiny platform was stunning! You could see the island 360 degrees. Too bad I couldn’t swim with my large HDvideocam, but we did manage to take lots of panoramic photos from the top of the lighthouse as shown below.

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Walking back through the village, we saw little smiling wide eyed children running around naked without a care in the world...you could never let your kids do that in Los Angeles! We also saw several villagers working on the small wooden bangka shown below. You could just see the pride in the way they worked, and if you saw the craftmanship we did, you would know why. Considering they lacked table saws with laser edge guides, powered routers, planers, drum sanders, edge finishers, etc, you sure couldn’t tell from the look of their work.

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Back we eventually made it to the dive bangka for the 3rd and final dive of the day at Balicasag.

After a long days worth of diving, there is nothing better than taking an outdoor private tropical shower, then retreating to your private jacuzzi shown below for a blissful relaxing jacuzzi massage on your private Eskaya Balai grounds.

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