We woke up just before five, got our gear and headed off to the dive shop with flashlights in the night. It was quite windy though and well there we found our suspicions to be true. The dive was cancelled due to rough sea. Bah. The question now was whether we should extend our stay or not.

After checking with the dive shop we decided to give it another day. The sun appeared out of the blue (pun intended) for half an hour but was then replaced by grey clouds, I guess weather forecasts don’t help much either. We bumped into Karin, the girl of the swedish couple, and agreed we would have dinner together later, it would be nice with some additional company.

In general I guess a week of lame weather isn’t the end of the world for us but I can imagine that the owner of the newly opened resort ponders whether this weather is just temporarily or if climate and weather really have change for the worse. The whole idea with diving and beaches is rather dependent on nice weather and tourists may prefer Malaysia, Honduras or other places if the Philippines starts to get associated with so-so weather…

We walked along Bounty Beach despite the weather and walking with sandals in hand feeling the waves tickle ones feet one almost got the illusion that weather was perfect. Children were playing and cheering and seem oblivious to the grey skies and we found their their trouble-free attitude to be rather contagious. We got back in time for a decent sunset and decided we’d try to book tickets to Puerto Princessa before dinner.
The attempts to book with Cebu Pacific online were of course in vain. After some cursing over the internet connection and waiting we found out that that the website refused our credit cards for some unknown reason. The other Swedish couple had themselves managed to book only after their forth of fifth attempt and could not tell why the last attempt was successful and the others had failed. We would get to Palawan some day, inshallah.

The dinner was nice, we exchanged tales of drilling, handymen and travel while enjoying a seafood curry at Hippocampus. We said our goodbyes rather early though since the thresher shark dive was scheduled for early morning again.

Sleeping long and well was a good start of the new year. Mirsada had scheduled a refresher dive to regain her confidence in her skills but otherwise the day was without any plans.

A prolonged breakfast turned into hardcore slacking with the brief exception of when Mike the instructor came to check Mirsadas theoretical skills. Even the sun greeted us with its presence for an hour or two. While Mirsada was doing her dive I’d try to upload the blog, check or book tickets to Donsol and check my mail. Then I’d take a swim or just work on my tan.

In 45 minutes I did not manage to login to gmail, I managed to transfer my blog (2.7Mb took about 40 minutes) and see that there was no direct flights from Cebu to Legaspi. While whining about this to the owner she asked if we had verified that the Whale sharks were present in Donsol. Apparently our guide book was dead wrong by mentioning Dec-Jan as perfect time, this varied from year to year and was not until February last year. Mental note is to double-check present conditions and not trust your piece-of-crap guidebook. When Mirsada got back the sun had, of course, hidden behind clouds again.

An attempt to take a swim was aborted after it started raining, the rest of the evening was spent studying and enjoying the daily dose of cinema Malapascua. We got to bed rather early since the thresher shark dive tomorrow was scheduled for the almost unholy time 0530.