These pictures were all taken on our trip to Maningning Island also known as Maniguin Island to foreigners.

The island is uninhabited except for a lighthouse and the caretaker. It's a little bit far, 4 hours boat ride from the nearest port, but definitely worth the trip. Around this small, beautiful island are virgin reefs, breathtaking walls and caves and visibility on the hundreds of feet. Expect to see every kind of pelagic you'd ever dream of, especially when the currents are running. And for nudibranch lovers, you'll go crazy over the virgin corals and diversity of creatures here.

That's Mark "The Lost Boy" Rosca, yours truly and Mic "Island Girl" Santos.

During our brief stay at Maningning (sigh, only one day), we were able to do only three dives. I can imagine staying here for a whole month and it still wouldn't be enough. Legends abound to what you can see here. Stories about snorkeling with pilot whales, schools of eagle rays, dozens of hammerheads, thousands and thousands of jacks and barracudas, and sharks everywhere you look. As for the deco divers, we have our own stories to be told over and over again to those unfortunate enough not to be able to expereince the sheer pleasure of Maningning Diving.

On the far left is John "Hooverman", Totit "Hover Kid", "Island Girl", behind her is her hubby Lee "Native Boy" er.. I mean "Nature Boy" Santos, behind him was our DM Jun, the one beside Island Girl is, yup you guessed it, me, and beside me is my cousin "Lost Boy".

Our trip to Maningning Island is one of the most memorable trips in my life. Yes, the diving was excellent, but what made it even more memorable was what happened topside... We started our trip at dawn, Mark, Mic and I went to the airport, the rest of the group had different flights and we decided to meet at our destination. The three of us got crammed up in a 6-seater plane (that includes the pilot with Mark as the co-pilot) for an hour and a half plane ride to Boracay. The flight was uneventful (crossing your fingers does work sometimes!) and upon arrival we proceeded to the docks for our boat ride to Boracay. We met up with Totit upon arrival and looked for the dive shop that I've arranged our dives with. Oddly enough, the dive shop was closed (Murphy's Law is now looming above us), turns out that the shop had an "accident" the week before and a Korean woman died. We decided to go with the same dive shop since I just dove with them a month ago and they were willing to take us to Yapak without a checkout dive. Yapak is just a 5-min. boat ride and is also a high quality dive site. It's a drop off that starts at around 100 ft. and goes down to 180-200 ft., you gotta go with an experienced Dive Master here since it's very easy to miss. Currents here can be fierce and you'll get to see a whole lot of pelagics. On our first day of diving, we saw, meter and a half long tunas and barracudas, jacks and napoleon wrasses as big as a small car.

One of the few rare underwater shots to survive the flood! That's Lee on the left, then Mic, John, the other so-called DM, then me!

Next morning, we got the whole gang complete. We looked around for someone who would take us to Maningning Island. The winds are starting to pick up and the waves are growing, everyone is saying that they couldn't take us because the weather made it too dangerous. Luckily the dive shop I initially talked to was still willing to take us. Next day, we all met at dawn to set up our gear, the sun never really came up and everyone was scared that the dive might be called off. Funny how real divers will brave anything just to get to a beautiful dive site. Finally the boat arrives and we started our journey. The open sea produced howling winds, torrential rain and waves as big as a small house. Still, everyone was still excited about the trip, some of us even stayed on the roof of the boat, braving the elements.

The Men of DECO Divers: Doing what they do best! Lounging around, of course! From the top: Totit, Lee, John, Mark then me.

As we approached the island, immediately everyone was awe-struck by the beauty of the place. The island was in the middle of nowhere, with no land in sight. It had a small beach on it's left with the rest of the island being a large plateau with cliffs plunging down to the sea. Everyone concluded that topography like this would definitely yield a great dive site. As we were about ready to dive, a group of pilot whales were seen playing around in the distance. When we jumped in the water, everyone thought that the bottom was only 30 ft. yet we were astounded to see our depth guages read 80 ft.. The water was crystal clear and visibility was exceptional at 200-300 ft.. Underwater, the rock formations were breathtaking, and after the first corner we saw a big turtle. It didn't seem to be bothered by our presence and some of us even got to play around with it. Off to the second peak, and we saw a school of eagle rays and manta rays. And upon looking down, we saw a lone four footer reef shark. Maningning dives can produce moments were you don't know where to look simply because there's too much around you. After the pelagic show that we encountered I chanced upon a huge fish in the distance. I couldn't tell what it is since it was about 300 or so ft away, it was silver and I estimate the size to be around 3 to 4 meters. With air running low and the computers starting to go into deco, we reluctantly went up to the shallower depths to do our deco/safety stop.

Contrary to local folklore, we don't spend every second diving. Here we are at the local dive shop, Alice in wonderland.

The next two dives produced pretty much the same scenery. We got to play around with a small two-footer shark, I even got to touch it. We also saw two huge napoleon wrasses. Most significant of all, the last dive was where Mark got his name "The Lost Boy". The details of this still held in tight secrecy with the DECO Divers, and may very well be carried to their grave. The journey home was just as hard, the weather was still bad and everyone was pretty exhausted. The next day, we all went home, but as fate would have it, Totek got wet as it was flooding near the airport, and with him was the film of the pictures taken on our first dive in Maningning. And so a vow was made, "WE SHALL RETURN!!!". Stay tuned for the "Return to Maningning".