tallandshorty

tallandshorty

Tuesday, 12 May 2015

Well isles be damned



Apologies once again for being slightly behind on this. Bad wifi, lots of travelling, and a reluctance to go near my computer are primarily to blame. That and the fact that the Philippines appears to be more conducive to relaxation than it is to getting things done. Still, after 18 days here we’ve finally had a rain day, so I decided to make the most of it. (Also Bec consoled herself with a few Margaritas last night while I followed the football, so is a little tired today). (Apologies mark 2: It turned out the wifi was so bad that uploading photos was a no go, so I'm now even later still...)


After flying from Hong Kong, we arrived in Manila late in the evening, so headed straight for our hotel. Despite the hour the roads were still heaving, and we were pretty glad to be heading off first thing the next day. After catching an early morning flight to Cebu, I quickly removed some key parts of my skeleton in order to fit into a local bus which took us 5 hours to the north of the island. From there a further 30 minute banka (small boat with outriggers) completed the last leg of the journey to Malapascua Island.

Even sitting sideways I still didn't fit...
We were heading to Malapascua for two reasons. 1) I’ve always wanted to see a thresher shark, and 2) Bec was going to try to learn to scuba dive… Now number 1 here was pretty easy to achieve, as the success rate for seeing the sharks is very high. Number 2 however was always going to be a different matter. After all, this is someone who has already thought she was attacked by a shark earlier in the trip, only to find out she’d snorkelled into a rock…

To be honest, it went better than I expected, although this was probably helped by her instructor grabbing her when she saw her first shark so she couldn’t swim off. In fact by the end of it Bec was actually getting pretty close to some sleeping white tips before describing them as “quite cute”. I’m not sure whether her view would have changed had they woken up. (Of course I’m sure, she would have cast them to the depths of hell – well that or swum off hotly pursued by a trail of her own bubbles).

Here is the evidence that she actually did it:
 

Making her way down from the boat
Not sure what my thumb is doing
A thresher shark! Sadly my go pro really struggles at distance while at depth,but I've included this as some form of rubbish proof.
Bec exiting a cave on one dive. Still no idea how we even got her in there
Another awful go pro photo, but if you've got a really good imagination you can see sharks sleeping in it.
Think this was a seahorse
Turns out clownfish are super aggressive. This one happily attacked by go pro until I went away

Not only were there some great dive sites, there were also some beautiful spots above water, most notably Kalanggaman Island which is the archetypal tropical island, with long white beaches, a few palm trees and not much besides.


The island at high tide
Two numpties on it



Back on Malapascua, when we weren’t diving, most of our time was filled with either falling asleep on the beanbags or working out if it was happy hour yet. It was just too hot to really get up to much else, and there was rarely a breath of wind. I’m not ashamed to admit it, but I love air conditioning un(air)conditionally. If it didn’t exist I wouldn’t have gone to sleep yet on this part of the trip. We were fortunate that there were a good group of other people diving who we hung out with most days, as well as the instructors and staff who were incredibly welcoming too (leading to an excellent 4 hour game of cards against humanity where Bec showed everyone that judging a small smiling book by its cover can surprise you…). She became known as the giggling assassin, for playing incredibly offensive cards, while looking the picture of smiling innocence at the end of the table.

Our view from the beanbags
The IQ special
Although I think we could have easily spent one month there by itself, we felt we had to move on, so started the full day of travel required to get to Dumaguete in Negros (boat, bus, taxi, ferry, ferry, taxi) with some reluctance. (2 for 1 happy hour cocktails were also hindering things). As a result we left later than planned (I’m being nice here, this is all Bec’s fault) and by the time we arrived in Cebu at 4pm it was too late to catch the ferries we needed to reach our destination. Cue a short haggle with a taxi driver who reckoned he could get us to the south of the island by 7pm, so that we could catch the last ferry over the shorter crossing from there. This despite thinking it would take 4 hours… Anyway thankfully he was completely insane, spent most of the journey in the wrong lane, and complained furiously if anyone came the other way while he was trying to overtake on a blind corner. This wasn’t helped by the fact that he kept making the sign of the cross every 30 minutes or so. 2 hours 40 minutes and 10 years older, we arrived in time to catch the last ferry. Having made it, Bec really didn’t see what I had been worrying about.

The next morning we transferred to Apo Island. We’d made the journey for one key reason, the turtle sanctuary which lies alongside the shoreline. Bec loves turtles almost as much as she loves margaritas, and so spent three happy days snorkelling around trying to find them. The nights however were less happy, as power on the island is limited so the fan would stop working. In addition there appears to rarely be any wind here, so you end up cooking in your own juices while pretending to sleep. I’m still tired.
Markedly irritated turtle



And another..
Token sunset (1)
Token sunset (2)


After that we had a couple of days in Dumaguete just to clean up and stock up on supplies, as well as to catch the boxing. With regards to the fights, let’s just say there was an overwhelming sense of mass depression, at least where we were. To help cheer everyone up I took the opportunity to join in with an open-mic night at a karaoke bar, abusing the audiences ears with a particularly average rendition of Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’. The applause I got at the start was about 5x what I got at the end. This is still better than I had expected.

The only real negative with Dumaguete was the all too present sexpat community (old white men with young local wives). I think it could easily double as an Operation Yewtree hideout.

We also had one day on Siquijor, a nearby island which is at pains to say that, despite the rumours, people don’t practice black magic. To be honest all I saw was a quiet island with some middling attractions and a river called the Po-o. Nothing funny to see here. (I literally swam in Po-o).


An old tree
A nice beach
The surprisingly blue po-o river. Still not funny.

After that it was time to head off, and two flights and a 6 hour van ride later we reached El Nido, our current location. However, I fear this is way too long already, so will stop now and leave our last couple of days until the next update. I have caught up with the football though (I’ll take 1-1) and the election (with all its Game of Thrones style carnage). Meanwhile I’ve told Bec that if she wants to keep her majority she’s going to have to form a coalition with football.

Until next time,
Rob&Bec






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