Kitesurfing and diving at Boracay 5.května
As I was planning our vacation with Pepino, I chose Boracay as ideal place to start with. Primarily I wanted to try kite-surfing, but there was supposed to be decent diving as well and Pepino could keep himself occupied while I was under water too. I read that it was a tourist trap, but honestly it's not so bad. Lots of tourist yes, but if you stay away from the bussiest areas, it's acceptable.
Getting to Boracay is not difficult. We flew from Manila to Caticlan. There we were spotted by a lady, who immediately offered to take us to the area where we wanted to stay and help us find a place to stay. It's a 5 minutes tricycle ride from the airport to a boat terminal. Then about 15 minutes on boat and finally another 15 minutes tricycle ride. We've deciided on staying in the boat station 3 area (white beach has 3 sections - north and most posh is BS1, middle commercial is BS2 and then south the most laid back is BS3). None of the places were full, so we picked the Orchids Place - it was recommended by my rough guides and was actually quite nice. I even engaged in true asian haggling and managed to bring the price from 2500 to 1800 PHP. Needless to say, I was very proud of myself :)
I'll start with
diving. There are many dive-shops along the beach - all keep the prices on the same level and so I simply picked up the 1st one -
Dive Guru. First day I did two reef dives with them and quite honestly, I wasn't impressed. I guess I'm too spolied already, but the reef was just not anything special. Next day I tried drift-dive they do in the boat chanel (surfacing is fun, you never know what's going to hit you), but there was nothing to see with the exception of a lonely shark hiding deep under a overhang. Current was ok, but not thrilling really. Last was a night dive at the artificial wreck (fairly large fishing ship at 90ft) - finally I actually had something to take a picture of. Loads of macro stuff, ghost pipefish, etc... Too bad the wreck is so deep as our bottom time was limited to 35 minutes - I could've stayed there for hours :)
Now to the real reason we went to boracay - kitesurfing. I picked ocean republic - ran by really nice and friendly locals. We ended up doing 3 lessons only as the wind conditions were not great. First hour we tried the baby kite just to get the handle of it. After 15 minutes of playing we switched to bigger 4-line kite, already in harness. Afternoon lesson was tricky - there was almost no wind, so practising kiting was real challenge. Pepino's instructor gave up after 30 minutes, mine kept me going for the whole hour, but it was a struggle. Next day morning, my instructor was confident enough to put me on board already. The wind was ok and so I kept trying. Gosh, watching the kite, putting the board on and then trying to build up the right speed with kite to get on the board is really tricky. I managed exactly once to properly ride about 30ft, the rest was just one failed attempt after another. I think I drank half of the ocean during that hour too :) It's still an awesome fun and I wish we had more time.
All this kept us pretty busy during those 3 days. We've checked out several local bars, saw fire-show performed by lady-boys, etc. We became regulars in one beach-bar, which is exactly what I'd like to run when I retire. I told that to the owner and assured him that I'll come back one day and buy it from him :) To confirm the future transaction, we had a shot of his own recipe drink called "dynamite" - yummy!