Think of a place where you can simply free dive with overwhelmingly huge underwater creatures such as whale sharks. I’m sure you’d only come up with a few places. Lucky for us, Filipinos, there’s Oslob, a municipality in Cebu where we can swim and take pictures with gentle giants locally known as “butanding.”
For just Php500 (for local tourists) and Php1,000 (for foreign tourists), you get a chance to see a whale shark up close, watch them eat, and free dive with them.
To do so, you have to register first at the briefing center in Tan-awan, the barangay in Oslob where the whale sharks can be found. You’re required to attend a short briefing session/orientation about whale shark interaction before you set out to sea.
Alternatively, instead of the briefing center, you can head straight to MB Sunrise View like we did. It’s a resort near the whale shark watching site that offers a whale shark watching package.
They’ll take care of everything for you: they’ll give you the tickets and snorkeling gear, bring you to the briefing center for the orientation, and even offer you an underwater camera if you don’t have one. They’ll save your pictures on a CD or USB flash drive, if you have one with you.
They also have lockers where you can leave your things before you swim with the whale sharks, and they also have shower areas for day trip guests where you can take a bath after the whale shark interaction.
Remember: the whale shark interaction is only available from 6am to 12nn, so it’s best to be there early when there are fewer tourists. Each tourist is only allowed 15 minutes (which you’ll find is enough) for each session. You’ll have to pay again if you want another session.
The Experience
Swimming and taking with the whale sharks is no easy feat. Haha. It was a rather cloudy morning and the waves were strong during our visit. The waters are deep too, although it’s just a few meters from the shore, so if you’re not a good swimmer (or not a swimmer at all), you’ll need to wear your life vest.
The boatmen are the ones who take your pictures underwater. As the other boatmen feed the whale sharks for them to come closer, the “photographers” let you know when a whale shark is close and give you the signal to swim underwater so they could take your picture.
They also try to push you underwater so you wouldn’t easily float up since you’re wearing a life vest.
For a first timer like me, it was amazing and surreal to see such huge creatures up close.
They seem scary at first because they’re so huge, but true to what they are called, they really are gentle giants.
As amazing as it was though, I found it exhausting to swim underwater every now and then to take pictures with the whale sharks, so after several shots, I just contented myself with watching the whale sharks as I floated around the boat until our 15 minutes was up. 😀
How to Get to Oslob from Dumaguete
- Go to Sibulan port via tricycle (Php 150) or bus (Php 20). Take note that Sibulan is another municipality in Negros Oriental, which is close to the airport, so it’s a rather long ride from the city center of Dumaguete.
- From Sibulan port, take a ferry to Liloan port. The fastest way is via fast craft (Php 62, 15 minutes). You can also take the pump boat (Php 45, 20-30 minutes). The ferry schedule is from 4:30am to 8pm.
- Once you’re in Liloan port, you can take a Ceres bus to get to the whale shark watching site. We weren’t able to do such, though, because it seemed that we should’ve bought tickets for the bus when we bought the ferry tickets. We took a tricycle instead, which took us to MB Sunrise.
- If you’re just on a day trip, it’s better to commission a tricycle for the entire day like we did. Our tricycle driver waited for us after the whale shark interaction, took us to Sumilon Island, picked us up from Sumilon Island, and drove us back to the port to Dumaguete.
- Additionally, you can also visit Tumalog Falls after your whale shark interaction. The falls is just near the whale shark watching site.
*Travel date: December 2014
Next Post: Sumilon Island in Oslob
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