Dive Review of El Galleon Dive Resort in
Philippines/Mindora

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El Galleon Dive Resort: "The Wow Moment at Isla Verde", May, 2022, by Patrick Ritter, CA, USA ( 2 reports). Report 11921.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations	N/A	Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving	N/A
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	Most dives follow a typical pattern. Get ready, backflip or stride in, assemble the group, blow some air, and descend together. Clear your ears going down, and stop at some shallow depth to check out your gear, adjust buoyancy, and get squared away. Everyone gives the ok, and you head out. That’s the basic pattern. If you’re lucky, after a while you come upon something good, or maybe even great. In rare cases, you encounter something spectacular. Then you may experience the Wow Moment, that instant when you are awed by some sight, or panorama, or phenomenon of nature. Might stop you in your tracks. Well, not your tracks really, perhaps stop you in your bubbles. The Wow Moment doesn’t happen every dive, or even that often. These days, you’re lucky if it happens at all. If things aren’t going right, you might instead have the Oh No! Moment. In extreme cases, even the Oh ****! Moment. With a few other divers from California’s Marin Scuba Club, I had been at the El Galleon Dive Resort in the Philippines, at Puerto Galera, Mindoro, for a couple of days. Excellent resort, private pier, excellent dive crews, good food, good prices, and chill atmosphere. The diving was good, and coral healthy, although visibility was a little lower than usual (30-40 feet or so). Overall great diving, though. But everyone there raved about the Isla Verde dive site, a marine reserve about an hour or so away by boat. Supposedly the best diving in the area. So we hired a larger dive boat and motored out. Dotted with palm trees and lush vegetation, Isla Verde is indeed a green island. But the dive site is anything but. It’s a few rocks jutting out of the ocean nearby, and nothing green about it. Hardly noticeable. But, at the top of an ancient volcano, it’s what’s below that matters. My first dive at Isla Verde started the usual way. Back flip, drop, and splash. Meet at the stern. All ok, we started down. Then the pattern changed, immediately, and dramatically. A few feet down, everything came into chrystal view, and an incredible panorama it was. With visibility a hundred feet plus, I could see way down the steep slope of the old volcano. It was covered in soft and hard coral, all healthy and robust. Thousands of fish everywhere. Canyons to explore, everything exploding with life and color. I started yelling, “Ow, ow!” No, I wasn’t hurting. But yelling “Wow” through a regulator just comes out that way. It was the Wow Moment and it happened in the first ten seconds, a relative first for me. So the usual dive pattern was off the table. I held two opposite thoughts at the same time, a diving double speak of sorts. So magnificent a scene, I wanted to just stop and marvel at it. But at the same time, I couldn’t wait another second to get down and head out on the dive. The Moment will do that to you, freeze you in amazement, for a moment, in full-blown wonderment. I descended slowly. Looking out into the blue, a gazillion juvenile Trigger Fish looked like a swarm of bats. There were giant barrel sponges with Moorish Idol inhabitants. Trumpet, Pipe, Scorpion and Lion fish. Puffers doing their thing. Morays and banded sea snakes. A cast of players too numerous to name them all. While it wasn’t the nudibranch capital of the world (Anilao to the north is) it had to be at least a nudibranch suburb. They were everywhere, and gaudy. Look very closely and you’ll see small sea horses. Going around the point we fought a feisty current, but were rewarded with more thousands of fish on the other side. It was almost too much to take in and yet not enough. As the dive neared its end, I was shaking my head in appreciation. Really spectacular, Isla Verde moved onto my top ten dive sites of all time. Then to top it off, the boat ride back. Turns out, the Philippinos are crazy about NBA basketball. For the most part, their favorite basketball team is the Golden State Warriors, who are mine as well. After our second incredible dive, I had just stowed my gear and sat down, as we headed back. As Mr. Stevens would say, we were miles from nowhere. One of the dive staff, a huge Warriors fan, called me over. He was watching the Warriors playoff game live, on his smart phone, with the game tied in the last two minutes. I was able to watch a great finish to an amazing game, live, out in the middle of the ocean. Steph Curry sank six straight free throws to ice the game and everyone celebrated. If you asked me to script what a perfect day would be like, this might be it. Of course, no one would believe that it could actually happen like that. But it actually did.
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	501-1000 dives
Where else diving	Raja Ampat, Bonaire, Roatan, Great Barrier Reef, Sea of Cortez, Panama, Cozumel, Turks and Caicos, Virgin Islands, Aruba, Hawaii, California.
Closest Airport	Manilla	Getting There
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny	Seas	surge
Water Temp	82-84°F / 28-29°C	Wetsuit Thickness
Water Visibility	30-120 Ft/ 9-37 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	no
Enforced diving restrictions	[Unspecified]
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	None	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	> 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish	N/A
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter	N/A	Boat Facilities	N/A
Overall rating for UWP's	N/A	Shore Facilities	N/A
UW Photo Comments	[None]

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Dive Review of El Galleon Dive Resort in Philippines/Mindora

El Galleon Dive Resort: "The Wow Moment at Isla Verde", May, 2022,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of El Galleon Dive Resort in
Philippines/Mindora