My first travel blog post is about diving in Coron, the wreck diving capital of the Philippines… where the ship docked so far from the wrecks that our dives were a lake and reef wall.

While Jeanne was out snorkeling (sorry, no images), I was on my way to enjoy 2 interesting dives with 3 of my fellow passengers courtesy of Pirate Divers as our local guides.

We headed out on an unusually configured dive boat with a steep and slender boarding ramp sitting on a rock. It was good that our gear was already aboard.

We headed to our first dive site, Barracuda Lake. It’s described as…

Dive into Barracuda Lake: crystal-clear freshwater with 30m visibility, surreal temperature layers, and dramatic limestone cliffs.

Thankfully the limestone cliffs have stairs because you need to carry your gear in and out.

Here we all are on the rocky bottom, just above the thermocline at about 40 feet. The thermocline is a barrier in the water where temperatures above and below are different. Above the temperature was in the low 80’s. Below the water hovered in the high 90’s. We actually felt a chill when we came back above the thermocline. That’s me in the foreground wearing the white shirt.

During our surface interval we enjoyed a tasty home cooked Philippine lunch of smoked fish, chicken, local vegetables, and rice.

After that we were back in the water diving on a coral reef wall. I’ll end this post with some pictures I pulled from one of the Pirate Divers crew go pro videos which he took during our dive.