Palawan - Club Paradise

What can I say about Club Paradise... Ive had a love hate relationship with this island since I was about 13 years old.

Being a more expensive resort and dive operation Club Paradise was never on the usual menu of places that my family would visit on our diving vacations when I was younger.  But since my first instructor was from there and he constantly harped about it all of us children always wanted to go there.

In the summer of '93 my mom finally planned a trip to CP and from the first time we jumped in the water it was everything we were told it would be.  The reef was alive with soft and hard corals, they had giant clams bigger than ive even seen before and for the first time in my life I saw a shark.  CP was everything Lou promised it would be.

We had a great diving vacation that week and saw more than we ever did before, going deeper than we ever did before.  Too bad it ended with our parents announcing their annulment.

For 2 decades I never went back to CP until in 2010 my stint on the siren brought me there.  In 2010 it was diferent though, el nino 2 years previous had killed almost all the colorful soft and hard corals i remembered CP for.  What was left was mostly mossy rocks.

But giving it a chance like i always do I found CP to have more in the form of bigger things.  there were turtles galore (duh its a turtle sanctuary) that didint mind when people swam right up to them.

But the most interesting if not surprising thing I saw at club paradise was the interaction of the cuttlefish with the sharks with the divers.  At first I thought the cuttlefish were friendly, coz they seemed to always stay wherever the divers were even following us around at some points.  One was so used to divers that it even let me tickle its belly and hold it long enough for a friend to take a really good photo of me with it.  Surprising for an animal that ussually shys away from humans, even more so human contact.

Then there are the sharks blacktips and whitetips constantly swimming by going round in circles.  It was only later when the owner of Club Paradise's Dugong dive center explained it to me that i realized that the cuttle fish were actually using us as a deterent from the sharks.  Wow I thought I guess its a behaviour passed on through the years.

All in all CP is a great resort... and even though the colorful corals are gone there is still so much to see on their house reef.  if youve got the time and the money I highly suggest a dugong tour for a truly special underwater experience.

Thanks to Nat Geo Photog Chris Huss for this portrait of me with a cuttlefish... taken at CP Feb 2011


For more info on club paradise email m.santos@bluewaterexpeditions.net