26th. April 2000

Written: Wednesday, 26 April 2000

Hi all:

Welcome to the post-Easter edition of the Moalboal Mailing List.

* The Weather

- It certainly seems as though summer has arrived. For the last couple of weeks we've had very light winds, (shame cry the windsurfers - Marc, Greg, Elli, Lars and Thomy - hurrah cry everyone else!), clear skies and plenty of sun. There have been a few safaris and they have also had good weather on their travels around the southern Visayas. Though as I write this we've just had a nice little squall hit us from the north which reminded us how fast storms can sweep down (or up) the Straits.

* Activities

- Happy birthday to Jesper of Neptune for last Monday. This isn't really an "activity" except that to help him celebrate a group of friends borrowed Jochen's Action Truck and went down to Santander where Jesper and Lybeth were staying. It was a very pleasant trip down punctuated by three or four stops to replenish the people fuel (but not the truck fuel of which more later) and enlivened by Mark doing his monkey impersonations; unfortunately he is *not* a monkey and managed to fall off the truck whilst it was cruising down the road! Mark survived with only a small graze on his arm and a bump on his head, which must prove something but I'm not sure what!

After that excitement, little remained to do except wish Jesper a happy birthday and visit the Santander fiesta. Several crates of beer later they all left to return to Moalboal. But . . . the road doesn't look the same at night and so a shortcut turned into a longcut and the truck ran out of fuel in the mountains between Argao and Alegria. Pierre did the sensible thing and curled up in the truck with a blanket while a few others went looking for fuel at 2 in the morning (and found it!). They finally got the truck running again and managed to get back to Moalboal at 07.00h - 10 hours to travel 70km. Peter summed it up best with a heartfelt - "a trip I will never forget!" I'm not sure whether Jochen will be adding this trip to his offerings though!

- Dolphin House has just opened a bar on White Beach - in fact right on the sand - which is in the local eatery style and offers simple food and cold beer.

- Congratulations to Ralf Arens of Savedra Dive Centre who has just passed his PADI Course Director Course held in Kota Kinabalu. Best wishes to him from all the divers in Moalboal.

- Some divers have reported seeing a nice school of bumphead parrotfish (many around 60cm) in Ronda Bay. Something to look out for on your next dive.

* Social

- Congratulations to Eve's Kiosk who opened their swimming pool last Saturday. The pool is now open and looks really good. There is a little landscaping to do still but that's well in hand. The blessing was a low-key affair which is probably as well considering what happened during Quo Vadis' swimming pool opening. Those who were there know, those who weren't can only be thankful they weren't!

- Welcome back to Mark Harman who arrived hotfoot from Australia for a seven month visit. I understand that San Miguel shares immediately perked up when they found out that he was here again. Is someone going to remind him that occasionally it's a good idea to do a *little* studying in order to pass an IDC/IE . . . . Welcome back anyway.

- Another welcome back to more old friends. A few people will remember Olaf who spent a few weeks diving at Visaya Divers back in 1994. This has been his first return visit since then and we hope that he enjoyed his time here. Maybe his next visit will be a bit sooner and for that he can convince his girlfriend to come as well. Other return visitors are Heiko, Isabelle and their two children. Heiko did his Divemaster course at Visaya in 1993 and the whole family are in the middle of yet another world tour (anyone remember Isabelle's last attempted world tour? Moalboal took nine months, the rest of the Philippines took one month and the remainder of the world two months!!).

- Another return visit, from Ida Stenby and Rune Lunde. They were here last year and really wanted to do a safari however for several reasons it didn't quite work. Well they made it back again and this time were successful and had a great five days diving. Ida also celebrated her xx birthday on 25th. April - Happy Birthday! I think all who attended her birthday party on White Beach had a very good afternoon, enjoyed a wonderful sunset and ate to fulfillment! There was also some considerable experimentation with the flotation characteristics of San Miguel bottles . . . !

- With a few exceptions, Easter has appeared to be rather quiet, especially compared with last year. However it was difficult to find a room during the period, so where were all the people? Mostly in Quo Vadis swimming pool I think!

- I understand that Visaya Divers has just bought themselves an air bank which will help their compressors to work more efficiently. Congratulations, a very sensible move.

- Oh and one last thing; apparently Bernd (owner of the Bayern Restaurant) has been seen again in Cebu. We hope that he has returned to health and will soon come back to Moalboal to re-open the restaurant since then we can get some very tasty cold cuts again!

* General

If anyone has any information that they think would be interesting for people on this list, please do let me know and I will add it in.

You may check the list web site - http://moalboal.listbot.com - to have a look at the message archives for this list or to subscribe and unsubscribe from this list.

You will find some of this information repeated on the "What's New" page of the Moalboal web site. I try to update this page every week or so rather than the every four weeks of this list, so keep an eye on the page. You can mark it with web-monitoring software which will mail you when the page changes. We don't have any adverts on our site so if it changes, it's because information on or the layout of the page(s) have been changed, not because an advert has changed!

Best regards,

Simon Wright.