A good 20 people had signed up for the boat expedition to Coron. Including us, eight of them were from German-speaking countries. So, for a change, more German than English was spoken. On board with us were a couple from Linz, a German couple and 2 Bavarians, and our clique quickly formed. Right at the start we headed to the first snorkelling spot, a small shipwreck (in very murky, shallow water). When our tour guide told us about the stops to come, it quickly became clear that we were actually heading almost exclusively to snorkelling spots – reefs that were often next to a beach, so the less enthusiastic snorkellers could relax in the sun a bit. So it was really a snorkelling expedition.
For Chris and me this was better than we could have hoped, since we never lay on the beach anyway and only wanted to spot fish and other creatures in the water.
Matthias, one of the Bavarians, was also a passionate diver and soon joined us, as, like us, he loved to freedive long and deep. So the freediving course on Bali had paid off here.
The crew cooked for us 3 times a day and served everything right on the boat after naming each dish in detail.
Rum and coke was included in the evening, and they made very sure everyone got enough of it.
The routine of the following 3 days at sea is easily explained:
Snorkelling, eating, chilling and a special activity in rotation, until in the evening you went to the landing beach to move into sweet but very basic open-air sleeping huts. Showers were taken from a scoop bucket or a simple bamboo shower. But you don't need more than that.
One of our favourite stops was a beautiful reef near the beach in a stronger current. So we could walk along the beach, get into the water there and then drift along the reef. We were able to see especially great sea creatures there, so we did the whole walk-and-drift twice.
Afterwards there was a game of beach volleyball before we were taken to our next huts that day too.
Organisationally, the usual Philippine chaos then broke out again, as there were enough huts for all participants but not enough mattresses.
In the evening there was even a fire show, for which the artist had also been taken on board for the three days. On day 2 Chris and I added an acro yoga intro to his programme. That way we could make our small contribution to the campfire atmosphere.
On one of the shore visits we were shown a typical village on one of the small islands (around the Linapacan area). In total about 100 people live there.
Since Matthias always had his dive computer with him when snorkelling, Chris could check his diving depth again once when he borrowed it.
Since our first freediving experiences almost half a year earlier, it had become completely normal to stay down a little longer and deeper. Chris was all the more delighted when we found out that, without noticing, he had comfortably reached a depth of 25 m.
I was glad, after my bronchitis, to finally be able to snorkel along and dive a little at all again. But the 3 breezy days at sea probably did my lungs good.
This was also the first time I got through the whole boat tour without a single travel-sickness tablet or coughing fit.
Perhaps one of the reasons for this was the indescribably beautiful light turquoise colour of the water that accompanied us every day.
Other special activities were cliff jumping and jumping off the boat. Our pro climber friends from Linz had been hoping for a deep-water start. I was really impressed by how well they climbed up the rock to then jump from the top into the sea. Others pulled themselves up a rope along an easier but slippery path to the jumping area. And of course there was a double somersault from Chris.
A Frenchman sank his expensive Apple Watch while jumping into the water.
When he noticed this quite a bit later, Chris was the one in the search party who fished the watch back out of the choppy sea by cleverly diving down around the jumping area. To do so he first had to work his way through dense seagrass, where the expensive watch had been hiding.
Our last snorkelling spot was then right by Coron. We looked at an old Japanese shipwreck that lay not too deep under the water.
The trip was definitely worth it, and once again we took our new friends to our hearts.
Luckily we were all going to the same island, so we could arrange activities together at our destination right away.
As always, enjoy the video and the pictures.