Dive Review of Dive Spot Asia Beach Resort in
Philippines/Cebu

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Dive Spot Asia Beach Resort: "far away from hurly burly", Oct, 2019, by Michael Joest, Kehl, DE ( Top Contributor 49 reports with 30 Helpful votes). Report 11195.
Photos Submitted with this Report Click on an image to see an enlarged version and captions
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving
Snorkeling
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	Dive Spot Asia Beach Resort 3.5 hours transfer through rush hour traffic Cebu is no fun at all after a long and tiring flight from Europe via Singapore to Cebu. I guess there is always rush hour here, Lucky for us our chosen resort was far away from the hurly burly of town life and peaceful and quite. It sits in lovely setting in a cut of the steep rocky coast line, which looks like nature provided just for them. The main building is tastefully anchored right where the slope levels out, the restaurant and recreational area is in front to the right on second floor, overlooking a small beach, neighbor islands, the big outrigger dive boat and “Bangka Higala”. Early birds enjoy a stunning sunrise from the restaurant. On the left is a wooden bamboo shed as dive center, with two big tubs for rinsing your gear, enough space for guest gear inside, next to a room for rental stuff and compressor. A nice garden invites you to spend leisure time after your daily program. There is a house reef right in front of the resort, which is worth looking at for critter lovers as day dawn or night dive. Normally they offer 2 tank morning dives going out on the Higala. 2 times in our week they did a full day trip to some outer shoals, which were the best diving we had there. “Caceres” started with a shallow beautiful coral garden, when you reached the edge a steep wall reached down to more than 50 m. The coral reef is amazing, the mixture of soft and hard coral sponges etcetera is awesome, the color variety fantastic and dazzle your eyes. Critter lovers will find their share of tiny things, kauri, nudis, crab shrimps seahorses etcetera. For those with bad eyesight there still was lion and scorpion fish around and plenty of Nemo in different colored anemone. Fish lovers will be disappointed. Besides the small hundreds of basslet fish fluttering above the coral you won´t find any species bigger than a fist. Once in a while a lonely bat fish cruised past, several times we stumbled over a medium sized turtle. Our guide spotted 3 crown of thorns which he picked up with his stick and dropped into the deep blue to starve there. I believe it will survive and make it´s way back up to the reef. It looks like there is heavy pressure of local fishing onto the reef, depleting all bigger life. Only once I found a small school of barracuda, animals not longer than 30 cm. A pity and shame that. One guide told us, a couple of years ago this reef was still teeming with fish life. Water had lovely 30 degrees, vis easily 30 m plus. The surface break on the big Bangka is nice, they serve tea or coffee with cookies sometimes fruits. The boat is typical for the Philippines with outrigger on both sides, two ladders and plenty of rope handles for divers waiting their turn on the ladder. It was a very enjoyable sort of lazy diving in tub water without any current or challenges at all. Ideal for senior divers like me or even better for beginners. The dive crew is superb, you only touch your gear donning it or later washing it – it waits for you on board in the morning in your box, you just check everything. After washing it when your dive program for the day is finished, you hang everything on your numbered spot and put your box underneath. In the morning everything is packed and ready to rumble, amazing these dive guides, I wonder how many hours they are working. The guides must have eagle eyes. When you told Shaun in the morning you would love to find pygmie seahorse, some special goby or nudi, tiny porcelain crab or shrimps, you could be sure he would point it out to you 20 min later on the reef, fantastic how they manage this, with my eyes impossible. Shaun soon noticed he did not need to point small things out to me, as I was looking out into the blue most times. One day whale sharks stood on the program. We went to Oslob, a small town which became famous and grew due to these big fish turning up near the shore. They marketed this and made a tourist attraction out of it. There were a lot of tourist coaches in town and I estimate more than 300 people crowding along the beach and around 25 boats in the water. You must buy a ticket, listen to some briefing, how to behave around the shark – no touch, no flash, no fins, 5 m distance which is a joke - than get a life vest and number for a small fisherman Bangka. They take you out for 40 min snorkeling near the boat looking for the huge guys. 7 animals were cruising around in between a bunch of batfish trying to grab some of the food they give the sharks, impressive this whole picture. The whale shark gobbles or sucks in all food floating around his mouth. This whole thing definitely is good for the locale economy, they learn that you earn more money attracting tourist with big fish instead of catching and selling it. Only future will show if this program and getting close to humans is good for the animals. However among our group already 5 people refused to join and thus support this attraction. Well, isn´t it the same as Malapascua, where we went next or Bahamas or Cuba shark feeding. It´s like a safari into African jungle to see the big five only this time under water. We went to a waterfall where you could hike climb 8 levels through the river bed and waterfall, you need good water resistant shoes and have to wear helmets and a life vest. This was lovely and adventurous. At a second waterfall motorbike riders took you to the place to save you a couple of hundred meters of hike up and down a narrow street. It was off season but we were lucky with the weather. Only 3 times we had heavy rain fall during the night and the noise was like a jetliner flying low over your hotel, puuuh. Life and food is cheap here, drinks come for around 200 pesos, they serve tasty shakes with mango banana. Our included complimentary breakfast consisted of some toast, one egg, some fruit and sausage, juice hardly enough to fill hungry divers belly, but you could any time order more and bigger. Lunch and dinner menu showed a good mixture of western and local cuisine, tasty and plenty. Several times we went into some local restaurant, where only pictures on the menu helped us to order the right meal as English was not well spoken or understood. It was delicious sometimes spicy food, where you learned to enjoy new taste. Contact: info@divespot-asia.com
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	Over 1000 dives
Where else diving	worldwide more than 100 destinations, mostly South Pacific and Asia, Africa and Caribbean
Closest Airport	Cebu City	Getting There
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny	Seas	calm
Water Temp	29-30°C / 84-86°F	Wetsuit Thickness	5
Water Visibility	25-30 M / 82-98 Ft
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	yes
Enforced diving restrictions	no deco
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	1 or 2	Mantas	None
Dolphins	1 or 2	Whale Sharks	> 2
Turtles	> 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter	N/A	Boat Facilities	N/A
Overall rating for UWP's	N/A	Shore Facilities	N/A
UW Photo Comments	[None]

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Dive Review of Dive Spot Asia Beach Resort in Philippines/Cebu

Dive Spot Asia Beach Resort: "far away from hurly burly", Oct, 2019,

Photos Submitted with this Report

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Dive Spot Asia Beach Resort in
Philippines/Cebu