Where's Scott?

We’ve planned another dive, and we wake early to catch the boat. Seb really tied one on the previous night, and he’s in really bad shape. He puts on a good British stiff upper lip (or stomach in this case) and we have an excellent dive exploring an artificial reef created by dumping some old […]

I wake and the family’s madly cooking for Mabel’s birthday party. The spread looks crazy, there are close to 100 little styrofoam boxes being filled with an assortment of snack bites in one corner, a massive pile of diced, spiced pork being rolled in rice tortillas into tiny logs and fried in another, and a […]

Seb and I are thrilled to be back in paradise! We decide to take full advantage of it, and make plans for another trip out to our second rock! The only boat we can get, though, is a TINY fishing boat. We try to get three in it and it promptly swamps, so Seb and […]

By morning we’ve agreed not to repeat the bus trip of death, and hunt down a nice AC bus. Seb gets into another shouting match with Mabel over the sudden appearance of a couple of Mabel’s friends who are joining us in Malapascua. Seb makes a point that these are more mouths to feed, and […]

Whoops! Time’s been flying by on Malapascua, and Mabel points out that our visas have almost expired! We’re just about out of cash again anyway, and since we’re not sure if we’ll get our visas extended, we pack up everything and prepare for the long road trip to Cebu city. We leave early, and bid […]

The second rock off our beach has been calling to us, and with a new snorkel mask from Cebu, we decide to swim out again and see how the coral compares. We take our time, and finally get out to find a beautiful expanse of hard and soft coral and a huge variety of sea […]

We’ve arranged for a shark dive with exotic, starting at 5am! We wake long before dawn, and Mabel’s cousin picks us up on his motorcycle. The dive’s an hour offshore, and we’re told dawn is the best time for shark spotting. The ocean floor is pretty barren, and the dive is almost uneventful, spotting just […]

We “waste” a day lazily lounging around the card table, and the family decides to make us a fresh chicken dinner. The men jump to life, and gather near the BBQ with a few live chickens. After positioning a bowl to catch the blood, one of them pulls back each chicken’s head while another slits […]

One of Mabel’s relatives is a dive master with Exotic on the far side of the island, and Seb and I are eager for a bit more scuba! We have an excellent 2 dive excursion out to Gato Island (Sipadan hasn’t completely ruined the sport it turns out!), and spend the afternoon drinking and eating […]

I’m amazingly not hung over, but I wake up to find a nice pool of vomitous on the floor and the wall, and apparently out the glass-slat window and down the outside of the house (oops!) There’s some ugly business going down outside my window – it appears that our neighbor has brought in the […]