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.
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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:
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Making her way down from the boat |
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Not sure what my thumb is doing |
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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. |
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Bec exiting a cave on one dive. Still no idea how we even got her in there |
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Another awful go pro photo, but if you've got a really good imagination you can see sharks sleeping in it. |
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Think this was a seahorse |
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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.
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The island at high tide |
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Two numpties on it |
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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.
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Our view from the beanbags |
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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.
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Markedly irritated turtle |
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And another.. |
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Token sunset (1) |
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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).
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An old tree |
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A nice beach |
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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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