Charlie's Diving Blog: A Sudden, Unexpected, Wonderful Dive Trip to Crystal Blue Resort, Anilao, Philippines February 14, 2024

I got home from an unplanned,surprise, trip to the excellent Crystal Blue Resort (divebcr.com) a week ago, Feb 7 after a twenty day trip which included the Resort's ten day "Critterfest" and seven day "Blackwater Safari". I made 55 dives in 17 days and was sometimes exhausted by the pace. I started the trip on January 18th just four days after a surprising message from Richard Salas, whom I frequently take diving trips with and whom I'm joining with on the Nai'a in Fiji for ten days of diving this coming September, telling me there was a sudden opening on his scheduled trip to Crystal Blue Resort but I had to get there on January 20th! My wonderful wife quickly backed the trip saying "You can't miss a chance like this! Since returning, I've been busily going through my hundreds of photos and I've finally been through them so now I'll talk about the dives, the photos and Crystal Blue Resort. I'm going to do multiple blogs for this wonderful diving trip and, in a change, I've collected my photos into several categories so each blog will tend to focus mostly on one or more of the different categories which include (drumroll): Nudibranchs, Frogfish, "Other fish" which include eels, gobies,blennies, Anemonefish, etc., Echinoderms (sea urchins, anemones, Sea Cucumbers), Cnidaria (corals, anemones), Crustaceans (shrimp, crabs,), Cephalopods (squid, octopus, cuttlefish), Darkwater Creatures, and surface photos. I arrived in Manila very early in the morning on January 20th off my direct flight from SFO on United which had started late at night on January 18th. Thankfully I'd slept a fair amount on the 15 hour flight. I was met by the passenger van from Crystal Blue Resort and we quickly started the two hour trip from the airport to the resort in Anilao. I was entertained and amazed by some of the vehicles, like small family filled tiny powered tricycles, and electrical infrastructure I saw on the trip. Below: Amazing electrical wiring infrastructure! But hey, it works!

A peak at the countryside during my ride, below:

Crystal Blue Resort, like all the waterfront properties in Anilao, is perched up and down a very steep propery, almost cliff like. Below are a couple of views from near the top of the resort:

I toured the Resort before settling into my room. Here's a couple shots from around the resort. One of the first things you encounter are the steep stairs that lead from your room down to the meeting area, cafeteria, bar, dive suit area, and the beach with the ubiquitous pangas used to transport us to our dive sites and to offshore drift buoys for the Darkwater drift dives. Below: Stairs! It was 71 steps down from my room to the dive suit area, then a few more down to the boats. I found myself repeating the old German saying "If you don't use your head you will use your feet!" each time I had to make an addition journey up and down the steps on top of those to eat, brush my teeth/change into diving shorts, meetings, etc. The stairs were an excellent workout! Below:

Here's the very full schedule for Critterfest, I made my first two dives, an afternoon followed by an evening/night dive, the afternoon I arrived. Below:

Below: Crystal Blue Resorts many dive sites, from a few minutes to maybe 30 minutes away by Panga

Now, where to start on the amazing range of creatures I saw and photo'd? Nearly all my photos were taken with my Canon 60 mm lens, this is more macro photography than I've done, combined, in all my 42 years of underwater photography during my 57 years of diving... I'm going to start with gobies because they're amazing including some irresistably cut yellow ones. There were amazing Whip/Black Coral gobies, including some sitting on their eggs. These were about an inch or so in length: