Thursday, April 17th – Sunday, April 20th, 2025
World Tour Days 166 – 169
We loved being in the ocean every day in Coron, but we were excited to leave the province of Palawan for Cebu. We caught a flight to Cebu City, then a taxi a few hours down to our hotel in Moalboal. In Moalboal our hotel was a 30 second walk from the ocean, right by where the sardine run happens. All the restaurants were down there, too, which made it an incredibly convenient place to stay.
Unfortunately on our road trip I trusted some room temperature chicken for lunch when I shouldn’t have and had to miss out on our first full day in Moalboal. Nick spent the day snorkeling on his own and enjoyed watching the sardines from above. He also joined a night dive, which he enjoyed. We learned about the mandarin fish from a fellow diver. Apparently they are something that can be seen on specific night dives and are colorful. They do not tend to come out during a full moon, though, which is of course when we were there so Nick did not see one.
After a rest day we did a scuba dive of the sardine run. It was a shallow dive, only 8m as the sardines weren’t that deep that day. They can go up to 20m down. Our dive ran along the reef where we saw the cutest bright yellow frog fish and of course that’s when the GoPro decided it wanted to freeze. I was so sad about that. Visibility was bad the week we were there; it is usually 30m+ so that was too bad. It was also Easter weekend so the ocean was packed with divers and snorkelers.
Our last day we rented a scooter and drove to Kawasan Falls. We got there before 8:30am so we beat the tour crowds. The water was refreshing compared to the warm ocean and the color was bright turquoise. I did slip hard on the moss covered platform trying to get a photo. I managed to not drop my phone in the water but did scrape up my knee pretty good. Now it matches my foot that’s scraped up from coral. We got some photos and swam around in our mandatory life jackets.
After returning from the waterfall we did another snorkel at the sardine run area. We saw a group of about 8 baby cuttlefish which were so stinking cute. There were of course a ton of sardines as usual and the visibility was slightly better than when we did our scuba dive. At the end of our dive Nick pointed out a sea snake to me. We have only even seen eels before so this was exciting. We watched it swim in and out of corals, surface, and hide away again. It was definitely camera shy.
Nicks favorite dinner was at the Hungry Monkeys where he got their Big Daddy dog. It was absolutely loaded with cheese, onions, jalepenos, and sauce. Dessert was from an incredible bakery called Smooth Bakery. They had the best cheescake on a stick and truffles. We ended up getting breakfast there too. Besides good food this place also had stunning sunsets, filling the sky with pink glow even though another island blocked the actual sun. The best one was our last night by far.
