Challenge Week 2009

Puerto Galera (Philippines)  Scuba Diving
Puerto Galera offers world class diving, students are being offered the chance to learn to dive or refine their understanding, knowledge and skills through further courses from Leading Dive industry professionals.
The trip will be based at La Laguna Beach Club a PADI 5 star Resort.

Click here for a short video about happenings during the week.

Date: 10 to 16 October 2009

Brief Itinerary

Action (approximately 28 hours – 4 full days) – A wide range of PADI Scuba Diving courses from Open Water to Rescue Diver. Advanced open water divers are able to explore all PADI speciality courses and /or become MASTER Scuba Divers.  These courses will run from Sunday to Tuesday. On Wednesday we will go by boat to Verdi Island to dive and have a BBQ lunch and Thursday is Community Service day.

Community and Service (approximately 11 hours – 1 evening and one full day) – Thursday will be spent working in the very poor local community with the focus on the educational environment of the primary school children. In 2008 we painted the outside of the school buildings. Students will be given a range of community service opportunities to choose from and Year 12 & 13 will be awarded CAS points inline with their project and hours.

Year 12 & 13 - There will be numerous events that will be CAS points opportunities in the months leading up to this trip.

What’s unique about this diving trip?

We are offering: PADI open-water course, PADI Advanced Open Water Course, PADI Rescue Diver Course. For qualified divers there is an exciting choice of PADI courses and specialties, these include: Nitrox, deep diving, wreck diving, search and recovery, night diving, navigation, drift diving, naturalist, and photography. Eligibility to do a course depends on certification level at the time of diving.

What’s unique about this destination?
One of the safest harbours in the world the “Port of Galleons” was where trading galleons from centuries past would take refuge from storms.  In the 21st century it offers some of the most spectacular diving anywhere in the world.  Because of the shallow water at the front of the resort and the long sandy drop off most of the confined water training will take place in the sea and not in the swimming pool maximizing the time spent interacting with nature.

The range of marine life you can sea is vast. Previous divers have seen turtles, sea horses, moray eels, the rare mandarin fish, frog fish, crocodile fish, giant clams, sea urchins and amazing hard & soft corals, to name but a few.

Scuba diving at Puerto Galera will not be a disappointment, it is a life changing experience.

“The best thing about the entire trip were the friendly staff at the resort, the food, and meeting all the funky underwater sea creatures and corals with exotic colours.” Claudia Leung

“ Before going on the trip I already liked to go scuba diving so when I went to Puerto Galera where there was a blue sky, white clouds, crystal clear water and a great sea life I enjoyed the whole entire experience immensely. I did things in which I could never have done in Hong Kong for example: night diving. The best thing about the whole week would be when I did my last dive, which was a 30 m wreck dive. It was a dive which I would never forget. I saw so many different creatures and sea life, it was just really beautiful” Clara Chan

Cost Per Student	7days + 6 nights - $9000 (includes all taxes but not the small charge for a visa for under 15 year olds not accompanied by parents or the entry visa for passports not granted an automatic 30 day visa).  This is exactly the same as the visa requirements for Boracay!
Number of places available	Open the resort is booked out for the week.
Open to which year groups	Year 8 - 13

For enquiries, please contact Mr Goff (ian.goff@kgv.edu.hk) and Mrs Mackett (janet.mackett@kgv.edu.hk).