I've no idea how I wound up at the Encenada Beach Resort in 1990. I mean, I know how I got there. I took a flight to Manila, then a bus to Batangas City and a ferry to Balatero Port on Mindoro, then a Jeepney to the resort. But how I found out about the place, I don't recall. Maybe I told someone in a bar in Manila I wanted to learn to scuba dive and they pointed me in this direction or maybe one of my co-workers had told me about the place.
I'd long wanted to dive. I had friends in the UK and at work that were members of the British Sub Aqua Club but their tales of diving in cold lakes or off the coast of scotland never really enthralled me. Dry suits or heavy wet suits were not my cup of tea and all the swimming involved to qualify, that rather daunted me.
No, I was looking for something a little easier and so I chose a PADI course offered at the Encenada Beach Resort. No swimming pool lessons here, no sir. I learned to dive under the waters between the boat I am on and the resort. After classroom sessions and learning the gear it was just a question of walking down the beach and into the water. And it was great fun. The only thing i really struggled with was removing the goggles, then putting them back on and clearing them of water. That always freaked me out but the rest of it was great fun.
Having learned the basics and demonstrating I knew what I was doing it was time to go out on the boat, steam around the headland and dive in more open waters on the reef. I really wish I had had an underwater camera setup back then.
I remember regular dives, drift dives, where we'd drift along with the current and surface quite some distance from where we'd entered the water and my favorite experience, night dives. Night dives were awesome. The only light came from the flashlights we all carried. It was surreal to see all those beams of light as ten or twelve of us would work our way along the reef. And the colors of the marine life were so much more vivid at night!
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