Travel Review: Training with Freedive Panglao, Philippines

Travel Review: Training with Freedive Panglao, Philippines

When freediving in Vancouver, Canada, nothing comes for free. You need to be able to cope with bad visibility, freezing cold, and high currents on nearly every dive. With Vancouver as our home-base, a trip to the Philippines in February was just what we needed. We spent about a week with Freedive Panglao.

Freediving in the Philippines

Freediving in the Philippines can be done year-round. During our trip the water was 25-26°C, usually calm in the morning, and had decent visibility. For our standards those are epic conditions, but the locals thought it was getting a tad cold. The water can reach temperatures of up to 28°C, so it really does not vary much between the seasons.

There are fantastic dive spots scattered across the Philippines. You could spend months exploring the different islands and still not see enough. But, you will need to spend some time to find out where the spots are with vertical coral walls versus those with shallow entries littered with sea urchins.

Freedive Panglao

Freedive Panglao is located on the island of Panglao, which can be reached by bridge from Bohol. Panglao has its own airport and you can fly there directly from Manila or even some international routes.

Freedive Panglao
Alenka Artnik (left) and Lyn Caro

The resort itself consists of accommodation, a pool, a restaurant, and an army of freediving instructors. Freedive Panglao is run by Stefan Randig, a 100m+ diver who holds most of the German national records.

Just show up and dive

We are used to organizing my own line dives in cold water. Having everything organized for us was a completely new and fantastic experience. With Freedive Panglao, we didn’t have to think about anything but the dive. An instructor deals with the buoy, the weight, and the safety. As long as you are suited up at 9 am and can fold yourself into a minivan, you’re good to go.

Freediving Philippines
A happy group of freedivers.

And this was really exceptional about Freedive Panglao. It was extremely organized. We had originally planned to dive elsewhere and ended up here by coincidence. But we simply showed up the day before and could start diving as soon as we wanted. Despite Freedive Panglao accomodating over 20 divers daily there was space for us.

With the peace of mind that came with dedicated safety, endless depth, and boat support, all of us attained personal bests in depth. At a training center like Freedive Panglao you could do without apnea walks, sprints or strength training and still become a better freediver.

Recreational diving on Panglao

The one downside of Freedive Panglao is that there are no organized recreational dives. Thankfully, Panglao is small and easy to navigate. There are ample great diving spots accessible from shore or boat. Our favourite recreational dive spot was the wall at Kalikasan Resort.

The wall at Kalikasan Resort is a vertical drop to 30 m with beautiful coral and a resident school of sardines. You can get here by scooter from Freedive Panglao in about 15 minutes, and for 100 Philippine Pesos you get access to the waterfront. This was formerly the location of Freedive+, another training center.

Another freediving resort is currently under construction on Panglao. With three freediving resorts in operation at Panglao, and their own freediving competition, this small island in the Philippines is very quickly turning into a hotspot for freediving in the Philippines.

Freedive Panglao, Stefan Randig
Alper Bekler (left) and Stefan Randig (the founder of Freedive Panglao).

The annual Asian Freediving Cup

As a growing hotspot for freedivers, Panglao of course has a professionaly run competition. The Asian Freediving Cup Attracts over 70 divers from more than 20 countries. The competition is hosted by Freedive Panglao and was first held in 2014. The 2019 Asian Freediving Cup is scheduled for June.

Jaap

Jaap is a geologist by trade and a freediver by passion. Jaap wrote the book Longer and Deeper in 2018. His book teaches how to train for freediving and spearfishing on land.

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