Island hopping involves using up precious time for travel. While winging it and booking as we go, we have learned flights are not as prevalent as we anticipated.

We spent most of a day flying out of Coron back to Cebu. We could not get a direct flight so had to fly into Clark first.

We spent the night in Cebu and took a three-hour van ride to Maya to catch a ferry. Thank goodness we had a normal driver this time.

The ferry schedule to Malapascua is pretty unique. The next ferry out was at 10 am and we arrived shortly before that. However, we were the only two people there to take it so couldn't go yet, as they only go once there are 16 people.

Not knowing how long that would take we dropped the large and paid about $50.00 CDN for a private ferry. Money well spent.

We were able to check in early and then went straight to the dive shop to book our dives.

It may not be a typical bucket list item, but one of mine is to see how many different shark dives I can experience. So far I have been in the oceans with Caribbean reef, white tip reef, black tip reef, nurse sharks, and great white sharks. And even though they are not sharks but are called whale sharks I have to include them.

Sharks are the reason we have come to this island. Malapascua Island is north of Cebu and is a popular dive location. What makes this small island a must-see is that it's the only place in the whole world where you can dive with thresher sharks year-round. I can't wait. Sometimes tiger sharks can be seen here too, but we don't have time to get in enough dives to try to find them. That's okay, we'll search for them another time.

We booked three dives. One night dive for this evening, and two dives tomorrow to look for the sharks.

After we got our gear together at the shop we went for lunch and then walked around the island. It's a very small island. It's mostly just narrow sand roads for pedestrians and motorbikes, no cars. It's much less commercially developed here giving it a very rustic and relaxed vibe.

It is only 2.5 kilometres wide by 1 kilometre, so you can explore the whole island in less than 2 hours.

Walking around we realized diving is not the only sport here, cock fighting is big as well.

There are noisy roosters everywhere! 🐓

We found the old fighting ring and spoke with a local who told us where the new one was. They are even adding bleachers to it as they have so many people come out. The next fight night is this Saturday.

After our Island tour, we returned to the dive shop to suit up for our night dive and

went out with two other divers.

We dove at Evelution's House Reef. It offers an incredible array of macro life. What a great dive, there were so many things that look cooler in the dark or come out in the dark. One funny sighting was a crab crawling along with a jellyfish resting on top of it. We even saw an octopus who kept poking its head out for us. Unfortunately, I did not have a GoPro to take photos. I should have one tomorrow.

I really enjoy the diving here. It is well worth the time it took to get here.