Manila visit

Last week I picked up my daughter at the airport. Manila has just about the worse international airport ever – even more so when you are picking someone up without your own car; basically you are not allowed into the airport at all and have to wait behind a fence in the heat. Thankfully the flight and its precious cargo came in the middle of the night, so the temperature was bearable.

We spent the next day visiting family and friends, lunch with my grand-mother and aunties in Makati, the business district, and then the evening at my friend Agnes’s house in Quezon City. Agnes is a sculptor, and her works are all over her house, where I used to hang out when I was in university. Let’s just say that I did a lot of experimenting there, and the place is filled with memories. As I was chatting with my friends, I told Sara to go around and take pictures of anything she found interesting. Here are a few of her shots: a white Buddha.

A white snail.

 A mango tree.

A papaya tree.

 The arched spine of a whale.

A banana leaf.

Finally, the Japanese-style guest house where I resided for three, magical months, journaling, reading, learning tai-chi, making candles, partying, casting I-ching, experimenting. I am curious as to why she chose to take shots of these objects and not others, and should really ask her sometime. As for now, she is fast asleep; tomorrow is her first day at her new school and in Junior High. My husband had to coach me to control my first-day jitters as she didn’t seem to have any and I would just end up transferring my fears to her… I am a lucky (and very grateful) wife and mother!

The whale sharks of Oslob

Ever since I heard about a place south of Cebu where you could swim with whale sharks, I knew it would be one of the destinations to check out once I lived here. It so happened that friends were visiting from Switzerland and they seemed up for the adventure. Since it is a relatively new place it was not yet in the guidebooks, I had to check the internet for some information. Apparently the fishermen in the small town of Oslob use a shrimp brine as bait when they go fishing. But aside from attracting the fish they would sell at the market, some much bigger creatures came too, lured by the salty treat: the butanding, or whale sharks, the largest fish known on earth. The fishermen eventually had to draw the giant sharks away in order to be able to fish. That is when the clients of nearby resorts started noticing them and were, not surprisingly, blow away by the sight. It didn’t take long for the fishermen to realize they could make more money showing the tourists the butanding then actually fishing. So now for about USD 25 (half price for locals) you can go and swim with these giant sea creatures and have an experience of a lifetime.

We were up at the crack of dawn and headed down to the spot about ten minutes from our little hotel in Oslob. A young woman briefed us for a few minutes not to touch the fish, to stay at about four meters away, not to use flash camera, among other simple guidelines. After paying our entrance fee, we were handed life jackets and led to a tiny boat. We were barely on the water when a huge dark shape crept up alongside… I nervously tried to put on my mask and my snorkel but somehow the snorkel wasn’t fitting right. We only had thirty minutes on the boat and I was anxious to get a closer look at the sharks. The rest of my group was already in the water and here I was struggling with my gear. 

Finally I got it on and jumped in. A fisherman on another boat was feeding a shark next to me. At about six or seven meters long (approximately twenty feet), these were adolescents; adults can reach up to twenty meters or sixty-five feet long. I was so close to the butanding I could just reach out and touch him. All of a sudden one of the guides said “Behind you, ma’am!” I turned around and suddenly there was another one, out of the blue (literally!).  I was surrounded by not one, not two, but three humungous beasts. The fishermen in their boats were feeding them and they were voraciously devouring the food, completely oblivious of me. 

I stuck close to the boat and looked for my friends who were clumped together a few meters away; they had jumped off the boat before me and as the boat moved away and the sharks followed the shrimp supply, my friends witnessed the scene and were dumbstruck and motionless for a few instants, while I was starting to panic, huddled near the boat, trying to dodge the whale sharks… Next thing we knew our time was up, and we had to say goodbye to Bubbles, George and their friends, a total of five whale sharks who let us watch them have their breakfast by the beach.

There is quite some controversy surrounding this activity on the net, with people saying it is bad to feed wild animals. As I do agree we don’t really know what the long term effect of this activity holds, after my experience with them, and the way the fishermen interact with them, I just want to go back and share this with my family.

Road trip

Earlier last week we decided to go on a second beach trip, this time a little further on the West coast of the island to Moalboal which we heard had some pretty beaches. A mere two and a half hours away, we were far away from the city. There was no actual sand beach to speak of, but the view was picture perfect, and so was the water, though the best part was really what lay underneath it.

After the submarine disappointment in El Nido and other famed beaches, which I found devastated from years of illegal fishing and unchecked mass tourism, I was surprised and very excited to see lush coral gardens teeming with colorful fish. We saw a sea turtle but s/he soon disappeared into the deep, deep blue. I spotted a fish I had never seen before and which I baptized Cactus fish because it looked exactly like a cactus only mobile and with eyes and mouth. I tried in vain to identify the fish on the internet but only found pictures of fish tacos instead. My husband managed to snap a picture but you can’t really see it very clearly since it is an aerial view. At least I have witnesses of what may have been an extremely rare species of fish.

The ride home was a bit tedious, riding under the rain on a motorbike, surrounded by cement trucks and bus drivers on speed (they are paid by the trip, not the day or hour), but it was worth it. Next out of town trip will be by car, with our first visitors from Geneva…