We woke up, got ready, packed our bags. I threw my stuff into my camera bag, towel, sunscreen, sunglasses, more sunscreen, hand sanitizer, kindle, debated taking another kind of sunscreen but realized that two was probably enough. There was only so much space and certain things took priority. Then there was our sunscreen party, five teachers in a room in our bathing suits making sure all our backs were covered. It was this that Jack and his lady friend walked into, and she promptly turned around and walked out. She didn't have any shorts, only jeans, no bathing suit. The bathing suit thing didn't surprise us. Filipinos generally don't have swim suits, especially those from lower classes, they just wear their clothes swimming. Which can be fine, as long as its not jeans. So we gave her some shorts, went to breakfast, filled up our cooler with drink and started our adventure!
All Aboard!
This is our Bonca driver, Lito and his two sons, the youngest in the back was named Jason, the older boy wasn't as talkative. The boys help out on the weekends, Lito's hope is that soon the oldest boy will be able to save up enough to get his own boat one day. The youngest boy, Jason, attends a local school during the week sporadically and helps out his father when he's not there. These schools are usually run by the church and there is always more kids than they can accommodate, this can leads to first come first serve basis everyday for school, if the one room class is already full the extra kids can be sent home. This does not happen everywhere, usually in the more rural areas, other place has systems where they only take the top kids based on testing, other areas it works on an every other day system. Our Bonca driver and his kids were great, they took us to their favourite places, showed us some amazing snorkel spots. I was shocked when they went snorkeling with us, I believe Lito and his boys are the first Bonca drives I've meet who can actually swim.
The water was beautiful. The islands were carved away lime stone. Many of them had no beaches, just cliffs. The first place we stopped was Governers Island. We paid our park entrance fee of a grand 20 peso each (about 50 cents). From there we hiked up to the view point at the top of the island.
The whole path was made out of these uneven stairs made from a combination of concrete and chiseled away rock.
The view was amazing and well worth the sweat.
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After this we climbed back down and while we were hanging out on the beach we were approached by a man wanting to know if we were interested in going helmet diving. It was cheap and I figured what the heck. They put a gaint, heavy space helmet looking thing over your head that is attached to an air hose that runs up to a compressor that pumps in oxygen. The air pressure keeps the water from filling the helmet. The helmets were a one-size- fits-all which is a lie, because what fits the average man does not fit me. This caused mine to not sit on my shoulders well and it had to be perfectly balanced on the outer edges otherwise it would slip and one of my shoulders would go up into the head whole. But that aside, it was a cool experience and a good introduction into what diving would be like. We were just under 10 feet down and surrounding the roped off area was giant clams and some coral that's seen better days and fish. There were three guides down there with us, they would bring us around, point out different things. The best was the "nemo" fish, who properly are called clown fish, but after the popularity of the pixar movie everyone here refers to them as the nemo here. So we found him, and his friends. There were plenty of sea anemones around, in each one was a different clown fish family. The guides would capture these fish (I have no clue how they didn't get stung) and bring them to us so we could play with them and hold them. They really the only fish that care that your there are interested in you. They then gave each of us a small bag of cooked rice that we could slowly open and watch the fish come and feed. It wasn't too long until I was surrounded by bright blue and yellow fish. Lastly there was the giant clams which when you touched or pushed the water towards they would snap shut cause a cloud of sea dust to puff up around them. It was a lot of fun. We were told that they would email us our pictures of us underwater as a part of our package, but it has yet to show up in my inbox. Oh well, it was still a great time, you'll just have to take my word for it.
The next place we went was to an island that had a cave/tunnel carved out through it by the water currents. This is the island and the smaller mouth of the cave where we exited from. Here our bonca driver set anchor and we all got out of the boat to snorkel, he seemed eager to show us the tunnel. He and his boys swam around as we looked at the coral and fish. Slowly we made our way toward the mouth of the cave. And that's when it hit me, the current, no warning, just a strong push to the left and into some coral. My left foot got the worst of it, once I returned out of the current's stream into calmer water I inspected my foot for damage. Sure enough there was two large pieces sticking out of my heel. I'm not gonna lie, it hurt like a bitch. The salt water wasn't helping. I was able to pull the larger of the two piece out, which elivated some of the pain, but the other coral was in there good, and I didn't want to pull it out and leave small pieces in there. Plus its a little difficult to do while floating in the ocean.
I embraced my inner hardcore awesomeness I continued snorkeling, making sure to give coral a wide birth. The tunnel was beautiful, the coral dissipated revealing a white sand bottom, the cave walls were dark and gave way to a circular space, the Pantheon, down to oculus in the top. Small stalactites hung from the ceiling, the valleys in between, small coffers, creating homes for little bats. Their cries echoing in the rotunda. The light danced on the blue green water as we all gazed up at the view above us. A small shallow area was in the middle of the cave where Jason, the young boy, stood, shins below the water, hands on his hips as he look triumphant towards us, king of the cave.
Lito lead us down a path a dark tunnel. I was the last one to enter, and as we snorkeled down it was dark, there was small rays of light that I followed reviling the silhouettes of those in front of me. There was the odd time where I simply swam into darkness ahead of me with hopes that there wasn't a rock wall to meet me. I got to the end met by several of my fellow explorers and more light. There was a small hole that we would have to crawl out of, which would lead to the cave's exit picture above. It was a tight fit for some of us. I may be thrown around by currents easier than others, but luckily my small size did come in handy here. We skirted around the island looking at the coral and fish, I made sure to respect a good distance between myself and the coral this time, unnecessarily sucking in while I swam over some of the shallower areas. We came back to the anchored boat, climbed in and assessed our battle wounds.
My foot, Brandon's side took a beating from an underwater rock archway he swam through, Danette's leg from the tunnel, Jack from climbing back on the bonca, and who knows what else. We were quite the sight. Remember when I said that my camera bag was small and I made sure to pack only the essentials. This is when I regretted leaving my first aid kit in the hotel room. The fuck was I thinking? So armed with my small bottle of hand sanitizer, a role of paper towel and a knife from Lito, we went to work on disinfecting cuts and bandaging wounds. I performed minor surgery on foot, cutting out the remaining piece of coral (seen below pre-op) and two smaller pieces around it. That's right Graeme, you're not the only future surgeon in the family. Rockstar.
Next came lunch on own private island, Scout Island. There we ate, looked for shells, tanned, read our books, swam and relaxed. We stayed for two hours and then headed back out again to our next location. The Coral Garden.
The coral garden was appropriately named, it was a wonderful snorkeling spot where various colours and fish were all around us under the water. There was a diving platform we docked to. Once on there, there was a large group of Philippinos getting out of the water, who I assume was an extended family. No sooner than we had stepped off the boat than they wanted to have their picture taken with us. Its a common occurrence that I've talked about before, but in tourist spots here we often quickly become the tourist attraction with our pale skin and interesting coloured hair. Before long every boy in the family is being encouraged to take a picture with Heather and I. We politely escaped and dove into the water. Well as polite as you can be.
The coral was amazing, however with the relentless stinging of my coral wounds I was overly cautions, looking for deeper water, something that had a good five or more feet between myself and the coral. It doesn't help that salt water magnifies things making everything seem closer than it is. But in this quest for "safe" water I ventured out into a deeper area where the coral began to disappear, and that's when I saw the first one. Giant clams, and I mean GIANT CLAMS! They were huge, four feet long, two, two and a half feet wide. And like the others we saw early they would react to being touched or water disturbed near them, clasping shut. It was amazing, and there were hundreds of them, stretching out on he ocean floor as far as I could see.
We went to this other small island where there was a rather unimpressive cavel/tunnel that ran throught he center. Currently a large blue tarp and plywood block off the end of the cave, so perhaps in its original state it was a little more exciting. But soon arrive our new "friends" we had meet on the diving platform. There were more pictures taken with us and then individual shots again. It was awkward, and I'm sure I'm now apart of several random guys facebook profile pictures.
Once we returned to the boat we told Lito to take us the long way back, the sun was starting to set, but we wanted to see a little more of the landscape around us.
He took us to a cove where there were ducks, and then they quickly fled our noisy boat, off into the sunset.
Lito had one more stop planned for us though. As we approached the island we saw mangrove tress lining the edges of the shore. We docked, Jason helping to pull is in, and settling to the shore to find crabs hiding in the rocks. Lito and his eldest son got out and lead us down a narrow path. As we started up a narrow slop that's when the smell hit our noses. Guano. Soon we were in the mouth of a cave where hundreds of large bat circled and filed out to feast on the emerging bugs. Later we found out that this island was appropriately named Bat Island.
Back to the boat, disinfect my cuts again. And then we set out into the setting sun, like a movie. We were tired, soar, but we all agreed, this trip was great.
As we drove back to shore we saw the fisher man set out crab traps for tomorrow morning. It was a good day.
We had a great dinner of fresh fish and seafood. I doctored my foot with a proper first aid kit. None of us made it up in time to watch the sunrise over the islands on Sunday. We had a lazy morning, ate breakfast, checked out. We looked at the market, then drove back to Subic, it took us less time in daylight and it helped that it was Sunday, both church day and major boxing fight was taking place.
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