WRENEE

Half-frame photos from Eric and Liz's birthday weekend in Joshua Tree and camping at the Integratron. March 31st and April 1st 2013

We spent just under a week in Coron Town, Busuanga Island spending the days diving at the nearby WWII wrecks, and taking boat trips to the neighboring islands.  We loved Coron Town, we had great hosts at the Patrik & Tezz Guesthouse, and we did some insane diving with Dino from Rocksteady Dive Center.  Our first dive after being certified in Southern California was on a wreck 25-30m (yes, meters!) below the surface.  Unfortunately we were so excited to be taking pictures and videos of the wreck that Jason and I were passing the camera back and forth, and it slipped out of our hands and floated up to the surface.  When diving you can't surface immediately, especially not from such a depth, and when we returned to the surface and looked for the camera, it was nowhere to be seen.  We lost two days of photos from island hopping and diving, and I was so heartbroken that I rented a crummy camera from the dive shop and returned to dive (and photograph) more wrecks the next day. Lesson learned: weight your camera when diving. Coron Town also has the largest, prettiest hot springs pool I have ever visited, super sketchy motorcycle tricycles speeding through town, lots of pregnant dogs and dogs making love, some pretty good restaurants, and the nicest people we encountered anywhere in the Philippines (both the locals and divers).

Coron was the top place I wanted to see on my trip to the Philippines, so it was the first place we went after a night in Manila.  Coron Island is the most beautiful place I have ever visited, without a doubt.  It's a small island inhabited only by natives that can be visited by boat from the neighboring larger Busuanga Island (where we stayed in Coron town, confusingly not on Coron Island).  The island has steep limestone cliffs, white sand beaches, and several lakes and lagoons.  Barracuda lake is an unusual lake with cool water at the top of the lake, and hot tub temperature water below the surface.  We did a dive in Barracuda lake, but unfortunately did not have a camera on the dive. Photos by Jason MacDonald and Renee Lusano, November 2012

Bohol was the last island we visited.  My main incentives to visit Bohol were to rent a scooter and ride to the Chocolate Hills, and to dive the Balicasag Island reserve.  With our underwater camera lost at sea at our first destination, we were unable to photograph the things we saw underwater at Balicasag; giant sea turtles, barracudas, a school of a thousand jackfish swimming in a circle around us, and countless shrimp, fish, eel and colorful corals.  On my birthday we hired a boat to a tiny sandbar island covered with starfish, urchins and sand dollars, and then  rented scooters to see the Tarsier Conservatory and attend a cock fight. We spent about 5 days on Panglao Island (the small island bridged to Bohol), and spent the last day stranded by a typhoon (which was just a lot of wind and rain where we were) and unable to catch our flight back to Manila to fly home. Photos by Jason MacDonald and Renee Lusano, November and December 2012