i left my Y in cebu

i Y cebu.

i am a proud ‘bisdak’.

(bisdak means bisayang-dako, loosely translated: one who grew up in the visayas, in my case cebu)

although it is no longer accurate for me to say that I spent most of my life in cebu since I left my beloved hometown when I was 14 years old to live in manila, cebu is still closest to my heart. aside from it being the place where most of my relatives are, it is where I spent my formative years in and where I developed my love for traveling and the outdoors.

so why do i Y cebu so? let me count the ways (and take note coz you might just find yourself in that side of the world)…

• the city in itself is a delight. it is as lively as manila, less the pollution, population & traffic and with nicer people. I enjoy going to carbon (the biggest public market in the city), the old churches (sto. nino, cebu cathedral, sto. rosario) and the 'touristy' places (fort san pedro, plaza independencia, taoist temple, magellan's cross) as much as i enjoy going to the night spots in and around the city.


• in cebu you find the yummiest lechon ever - the cebu lechon, whether it be cnt or allejo (branded lechon stores) or the lechon sold in the area of jai-alai, nothing can top cebu lechon - ask anthony bourdain. to truly experience the gastronomical delights in cebu, i never pass up a chicharon or meal of barbecue & pu-so (hanging rice or boiled rice wrapped in woven coconut leaves) sold in almost in every corner of the city and always make it a point to visit larsian - a whole block of barbeque stands in uptown cebu) near fuente osmena.


• sinulog, in my own humble opinion, is the best festival in the country. people from all over the country, (heck, from all over the world!) troop to cebu every third sunday of january to party! one has to experience sinulog in order to know what i mean.


• beaches abound cebu. nearest ones are in mactan island and olango (where the fish and bird sanctuary are). i have only been to a number of them - on the south side there's argao, badian (do a side trip to kawasan falls), moalboal (great diving - comparable to apo island), up north there's bantayan & malapascua (for the thresher sharks and mantas).

• from cebu you can get to anywhere - jump on a ferry and you'll be in bohol or negros in a matter of hours, dumaguete and leyte is just a few hours of road trip+ro-ro away.

i can go on and on about cebu but i also admit that I can still be a tourist to some parts of my home province. cebu is packed with beautiful sights from end to end! having left cebu at a young age, and just going home every now and then for family gatherings, there are a lot of hidden pleasures I have yet to discover. and i realized, sadly, i don't even have pretty pictures of the city. what an abomination! this cannot be. i will rectify this soon.

I left my Y in cebu and there it will stay.

www.cebu.gov.ph
www.cebucitytourism.com

Colorful Characters (And I Don't Mean the Fishes)

Photo credit: Junjie Kho

1. I once found myself diving with a yoga instructor who wore white like a trademark and who, it was whispered around the deck, tutored presidents and CEOs. I wondered then why this supposed master at breathing was exhaling bubbles at shallow intervals, consuming air faster than the rest of us.

She was excitable, barreling through other divers for a closer look at say, a pawikan (sea turtle) or marble ray, disturbing it away to the group’s exasperation. For a practitioner of body awareness, I noted with some fascination, this woman did not seem to know how to position herself unobtrusively around marine life.

2. I also ended up diving with a deaf-mute underwater photographer who initially had trouble connecting with people (most shied away from the perceived extra effort of trying to make sense of his gesticulations). Underwater, however, where everyone was muted anyway, he was a master at the hand signals, truly in his element, the most animated and “talkative” in the group.

Dangling the promise of an underwater photo-souvenir, he confidently herded (with energetic wrist flicks) divers this way and that for the best backdrop of schooling barracudas—although I noticed, he didn’t always press the camera button!

3. While on our knees and lined up in a row on Monad Shoal in Malapascua (waiting, waiting for a manta to glide in), we were semi-aware of one local divemaster swimming to and fro from behind our backs—methodically picking up one octopus (back-up regulator) after another, seemingly examining it, test-breathing from it, even hand-signaling O.K.

Later, he confessed that he was already about to backroll when he discovered that his tank had only 1,500 psi. This being the second dive, and with all the other tanks awarded to guests, he decided to just go with it and, when he already needed to, just start “testing” other divers’ air. Ingenious.

4. On a dive in Apo Reef, three divers, including our most regular divemaster, brought down one newly bought underwater camera housing each to TEST against possible leaking-under-pressure.

Midway into the dive, what else would choose to reveal itself but a magnificent hammerhead shark!

No one in the group had ever seen one before. Tanks were banged like crazy. Arms punched overhead. Muffled screams. And they could've kicked themselves over the fact that all three camera housings contained only…drumroll please…paper.

5. We were doing Tubbataha out on the Sulu Seas for the entire last week of May when blue skies turned grey. With the onslaught of wind and rain, our charter boat pitched and rolled. I chose to stay up on deck because I figured looking out on the horizon helped with possible dizziness better than being cooped up in my cabin.

Soon enough however, one guy couldn’t help but hurl his lunch over the rail (look out down below!). Then, like a wave, up to four people followed suit with their own gagging-and-heaving. It was not a pretty sight.

So, with all that going on, no one noticed early enough that one of the chase boats tethered to the side of our “mother boat” was being tossed by swells—hard enough for it to slip under and then turn over! Unfortunately, in that very chase boat were the BCs, regs, and other gear of a group of divers supposedly scheduled to head out (before the weather turned).

Everyone was suddenly on one side of our boat, watching the submerged chase boat as it further receded under. At least two guys hurriedly suited up in a valiant effort to rescue the gear but by then these were sunk to impossible depths.

The pity for this group who lost their gear (and consequently, the chance to go out on the last few precious dives of the trip) was quite palpable.

Then came the announcement: the company’s dive shop back in Manila will outfit these guys with top-of-the-line replacements for everything they lost—down to every reel, slate or whatever equipment declared hooked to their BCs when these went down.

Human nature being what it is, pity quickly turned to envy, and there was actual talk of maybe tossing one’s own battered gear (include the rusty dive knife! and the flooded torch!) overboard “in sympathy” too.

6. In Ticao Bowl, Masbate while diving for mantas, we noticed that this outrigger boat seemed to be shadowing us. The fisherman looked like he was just going about his usual business. Most of the time, he lay on his boat, probably waiting for a tug on his lines or movement in his net.

As we chatted in between dives, one of the crew noticed activity, just beneath the water's surface, at a short distance. The local divemaster excitedly said that it could be a manta.

The fisherman and his banca suddenly leapt to life, quickly motoring off to that area. We actually saw him threw a harpoon into the water. We screamed. One of the divers, shouting obscenities throughout, pulled out a gun and fired shots in the air (which was scary in itself; he turned out to be a local law enforcer). We were relieved to see the fisherman pull the harpoon out of the water with nothing stuck at the end.

That this fisherman (from another town, the local DM was sure) trailed us knowing that we were here for the mantas (that divers unwittingly bring danger to what we love) was a sobering realization!

7. Finally, imagine us, four females just surfaced from Monad Shoal, waiting by the side of the outrigger boat for our turn to climb up the ladder. Every now and then, we'd plant our masked faces back into the water to locate just where a jellyfish was in reference to us. We were of course convinced that it kept getting nearer. There were screams. Fins were getting to ssed back into the boat. There was a mad scramble up.

Non-divers still rib us on the idea that on that very trip, we "bravely" sought out

and found our toothy thresher sharks but went jelly on the knees and girly-girly over this small creature that really, was at the mercy of where the currents took it.

But then again, someone who I thought was my friend had to point out (a parallel contradiction): they already know that I don't mind, say, rapelling over the side of a ship (an adventure race dare) but I have to be escorted across Manila's streets!

indayguapa: my wandering sole

through the years, i have unknowingly gained the reputation of being always on-the-go, always up to something and constantly planning trips and adventures to experience. i say unknowingly because i do not go out of my way to be and do these things. its in my nature to move - i cannot sit still, i cannot NOT experience new things, i simply cannot bear to let adventure pass me by.

looking back at the past couple of years (just the couple of years and nothing later coz that would be a litany of travels), i realized that the reputation is well-deserved, i have really been to a lot of places - albeit mostly in and around our wonderful country, and experienced stuff that i could store into my box of 'the last time i did something for the first time' or in my chest of 'things i love doing over and over again'.

2007 brought me home to cebu a total of 6 times! for sinulog, for family reunions and mostly for frolicking in its beautiful beaches and as stopover to other destinations. moalboal, malapascua & bohol offered great diving, bantayan was reminiscent of boracay in the yesteryears - quiet, serene & clean. i had numerous diving trips for this year too - apo island in dumaguete (with side trip to pulang bato falls), wreck diving in subic and of course the easily accessible batangas with numerous resort choices like balai, dive & trek, outrigger, pier uno & the lesser known but quite lovely vista aplaya. for this year, i drove as far as palaui in cagayan valley and in nearby quick-vacation destinations like tagaytay for food tripping, taal for wakeboarding, clark for hot air balloonfest and zambales for beach-bumming & surfing. i also went on a quick trip to boracay and this was also the year i discovered the 'boracay' of cavite - the calumpang marine base beach on a cove near puerto azul and inside a military base which is open to the public for a mere P50 entrance fee.

i thought i couldn't top my '07 but 2008 proved to be another year of endless travels and 'first times'. i had return trips to cebu for sinulog and family vacations - to olango island in mactan for bird-watching, went back to clark for my 2nd year of hot air balloon fest, anilao for diving - tried planet dive and solana for the first time. for holy week i did a fun and uncharted road trip with my friends which took us camping in anawangin in zambales as our first stop, dropped by capones before heading to do another overnighter on one of the uninhabited islands of the 100 islands in pangasinan, then to la union for surfing and had our last stop in bulacan for the holy week salubong. as a break from the tiring but fun road trip, i rediscovered metro manila - spent a day in quiapo and la mesa ecopark in the succeeding weekends. no sooner had i recovered from the holy week road trip, i was off to donsol in sorsogon to go swimming with the whalesharks.

a highlight of this year is my first tubbattaha live-aboard trip - 7 days of unadulterated diving - flew to palawan to catch apo explorer, spent 7 days on the boat cruising from tubbattaha, cuyo and quiminatin islands, apo reef and then back to batangas. i took a short break from travel and tested my physical strength and endurance at the TNF100, a 100km race through the hills and mountainsides of cavite and batangas, and survived. but i really cannot stay put for long, in to time i was organizing dive trips to galera and verde island, was invited by my good friend kat to her hometown in davao for kadayawan and arranged a trek to pinatubo & side trip to the taksiyapo wall in tarlac for my best girl friends. i was quite content to sit out the remainder of the year since i've had my fair share of traveling already and loads of work came in during the last quarter (yes, despite all the trips, i work hard too!) but wanderlust truly finds me, a few days before the year ended i was invited to visit the mangyans in foothills of mount halcon in mindoro.

my only regret about all my wanderings is that i did not blog about it. yes i uploaded tons of pictures and short description from my various travels in my social networking pages, although i willingly share my suggestions for things to do, places to see & information, details and budgets for trips when friends ask for it, i just realized that it was a bit selfish of me to keep it to a chosen few. but it is never too late to change, hence this blog.

there's still so much to do and so many places to see right here in the philippines. my wandering sole has brought me to the farthest corners and yet i remain insatiable. maybe its high time to plan bigger, grander things. maybe i should go a little further. instead of round-the-corner, why not round-the-world.

oh yes, why truly not.