Introducing My Hiker Friends to the World of Freediving at Moalboal Cebu

Over the weekend, I and my hiker friends (shoutout to fellow hiveans @kev.incredible, @mariasalve, and @ybanezkim26 hahahaha) went to Moalboal, Cebu, a very wonderful diving spot, for them to try out freediving. In case you don't know, I started my adventure journey as a hiker where I met a lot of friends, and was just last year I indulged in the freediving world. After a few months of trying to influence my hiker friends to try out freediving, which they were hard to convince and difficult to persuade, finally gave in and gave it a chance to it.

Since I was so passionate about it, I spearheaded organizing the event. From making the itinerary, booking the accommodation, making the budget forecast, coordinating for the tour guide, and more HAHA! I think it was my first time doing this for a trip. Also, I even made some slides about freediving for my friends! HAHAHA!

MOALBOAL - A DIVER'S HAVEN

Moalboal Tourism Office

MOALBOAL - is a 4th class municipality in the south of Cebu. It is known around the world for its rich marine life - from vibrant corals to sea turtles, and the amazing sardine run. I have been here a couple of times but it will be my second time freediving. One can get a tour guide for a snorkeling adventure for those who don't know how to swim or could do scuba diving, or even a freediving trip. Their tour guides are mostly trained through experience to capture amazing videos and photos so it's a plus hahaha!

INDINO GUEST HOUSE - Our Accommodation

On this trip, we booked our accommodation at Indino's Guest House. It is located at Basdiot, Moalboal, just behind Smooth Cafe where the center of the party is located. Our room was rated at P4,000 (71 USD) good for 8 persons.

I thought that Indino was just situated in a building, but it appeared to be a row of different kinds of houses. We had one room on the second floor of a wood-type house. The place was amazing. It has spacious beds, working AC, towels, toiletries, free drinking water, and more. However, they have a limited supply of water. So we had to save some water on a pail so we can use it when we take a bath after the freediving trip.

The place also offers gear rental such as life vest, short fins, long fins, and mask and snorkel. My friend rented short fins that cost P100 (1.78 USD). So in case you don't have your gears ready, you can rent them from Indino right away.

I believe they also offer scuba diving and freediving tour services. However, since I have a known tour guide, we didn't avail it. You can check out their Facebook page for more details, and inquiries.

Freediving 101 Sharing

As I've mentioned in the introduction, the real purpose of this trip is for my hiker friends to try out freediving. During a few of our hikes before, they had tons of questions and comments about how scary it is, or how expensive it is. So I took this opportunity to them to share at least the basics of freediving. I am no certified freediver so I am not the best person to teach hence I only shared what I knew.

Of course, I still recommended they take an "Introduction to Freediving" course from a professional for them to gain deeper knowledge about the sport.

Their First Attempt at Freediving

It was around 4 in the afternoon when we finished the freediving 101 sharing, and it rained hard. LOL! There was an outgoing typhoon in the country that's why. After around 15 minutes passed, the rain stopped so we pushed through our planned practice dive.

Look at that waves HAHAHA

So everyone prepared and went to the sea, and the waves were chaotic LOL. The waves and current were strong however we saw some life buoys floating and some divers in the distance so we still pushed.

As we swam towards a floating cottage, the waves and currents were still consistently strong. And everyone was already struggling and started to get scared. We were still persistent and reached the floating cottage. The floating cottage is situated at the edge of the reef. The shallow part of the water is a bit murky, however, when I tried to dive, it turned out to be clear below. Unfortunately, the waves were still strong and one of our friends already started to cry so we had to go back to the shore for our safety. Too bad, their first attempt left a bad impression. Even one of our hiker friends said that this is really not for them. Edi don't LOL jk hahaha

Faces after first failed attempt in free diving LOL

We went back to Indino with a heavy heart after a failed attempt to dive. So I said that if the weather will be bad on that night, we will have to cancel our booked freediving tour on the next day. Good thing, the weather turned out to be okay that night so I didn't cancel it.

Here are some cocktail drinks that we had to enjoy the night!

Second Attempt and the Freediving Tour

Weeks before this trip, I already booked a freediving tour with a guide that I already knew. He was our guide when we had our first freediving trip in Moalboal, and since his services were great, I booked his services again. If you want to book a guide, you can message Christian on his Facebook.

Selfie with Christian, our guide

Our phones alarmed us at 6 in the morning. We woke up and I was feeling excited. The sun was up! Thank God! We went up at 6:30 and took a light breakfast since we cannot eat heavily before a freediving trip.

After light breakfast and preparation, we finally met Christian at 8 in the morning. Their standard tour package consists of two diving spots - the sardines run, and the turtle's point. Since we are doing freediving, we customized the tour with just the sardine run, and on the mermaid spot.

The Amazing Sardine Run

The weather was amazing! It was sunny, it was hot, and the sea was calm. It was a perfect day for freediving!

Everything was perfect however when we did the sardine run, dang, there were thousands of people (obviously it's hyperbole but it felt like that)! I couldn't even relax appropriately because people were bumping me. Even my flippers get often bumped by other people's fins which resulted in more scratches (ouch).

See those feet? HAHAHA

Even so, we tried our best to chase the sardines which was absolutely out of this world. They were like bazillion sardines grouped and forming insane shapes. And these fishes swimming away together when you try to chase them as fast as they could is one of a kind experience.

My friends did try their best to free dive and chase sardines, and I think they have started to like it.

Mermaid Statue - Perfect for Awra shots

This spot is mostly known by freedivers hence there were not a lot of people when we got there. There were few freedivers when we got there and turned out two of them were ex-workmates. HAHAHA!

This spot has a mermaid status sank underwater where you can best strike poses with it. It's only shallow which a depth of around 5 meters during a low tide. We immediately take turns striking a pose and do "awra" shots before it gets crowded.

Just a few meters from the mermaid statue is a tube bench where we also visited and took some shots.

Our freediving tour ended after that spot. We went back to our accommodation feeling happy and hungry. Happy with the amazing experience, but hungry because of exhaustion from a 2-hour freediving tour with only having light breakfast beforehand. Because of that, we had our sumptuous and extravagant lunch at Smooth Cafe after checking out.

Although this trip had its ups and downs because of the weather and over-budget (because of the food expenses HAHAHA we were supposed to have a P150 (2.68 USD) meal but turned out to have P450 (8 USD) meals instead!). Hopefully, my hiker friends will still try again this sport. Who knows? They will be diving deeper than me in the future!