naga - pili - albay leg

finally our bicolandia adventure became a reality last weekend. i was really a bugger to my travel buddies on this for weeks, cos it has started to rain already, and i don’t wanna miss the chance of exploring donsol and experiencing butandings*

in my earlier post, i have mentioned our mishaps of the said trip. but all these are nothing if i’d count all the amazing experiences we had when we saw the majestic mayon, the nostalgic cagsawa ruins, the highly sophisticated wakeboarding paradise cwc, the whimsical fire fly watching and of course the splendid humbling butanding (whaleshark) encounter.

we changed our itinerary and headed first to naga. it was M’s request that we pay visit to the penafrancia image at the cathedral. so there, i was expecting that the image resides in an old grand church but it isn’t. we were told that it was relocated there only few years ago, however its old dwelling is just a few blocks away. but we decided not to go there anymore cos we realized how hungry we were and a mean breakfast meal was the only thing we can think of.

then we visited another church, which i liked more btw. both churches have big and beautifully landscaped gardens to boot. its green gives you the much needed calming fresh air.

we then proceeded to pili to see its latest attraction – camsur watersports complex. a flagship project of mayor villafuerte. i particularly got interested when i saw their gigantic billboard proudly claiming 'the best cable park in the world'. i don’t know about it cos it's the first time i saw something of that kind. but to host an international wakeboarding competition (too bad we missed this last week), there must be a degree of truth to their claim :p

oh well, i like its overall design, both in space planning and aesthetics points of view. and i like the idea that it’s a wifi free zone ;-) woot!woot! was thinking of wakeboarding, but my fancy (now i think it’s so silly of me) over an oh-so-hunky bloke – whom i eventually found out to be paulo paraiso (actor/model) made me just lounge on the side and watch the wakeboarders/kneeboarders instead. hahaha! so showbiz of me! pero promise i never thought he's that hottie in person :-)

an hour and a quarter after we left pili, we’re in daraga. cagsawa ruins is another must-see and we spent our late afternoon there just staring at the majestic volcano and the ruins. we climbed the tower and sat on its window facing mayon. it felt good sitting there, whilst sun is peeking through the clouds covering the cone’s tip. up there, all my cares seem to have vanished. how i wish to have the same view…same air…same peace in manila. but it came to me in an epiphany that the very calmness i’m savouring is the very result of a tragic death of almost 500 people and hundreds more missing on top of millions worth of properties and crops that were wiped out by the supertyphoon reming, and the eventual mudslide of volcanic ash and boulders of the then active mayon. *sigh*

it then made me admire bicolanos for their resiliency. bicol is the most badly damaged in 2006, but only a little over 6 months, there they are seemingly unscathed and can even afford to smile to tourists who visit their place. sure there are still some broken roads, some families still living in relief areas and some wooden crosses planted randomly on the field (signifying that on that spot a person was buried alive of the mudslide) but apart from these, bicolanos have slowly risen up and is now restoring their lives.

haaay! galing talaga ng pinoy! kakabilib! an expat friend J in thailand once told me, we are known to be the most resilient people of asia, we can be bended but we're never broken. wow naman!

so there next stop: donsol

i’ll post it though separately as donsol is in itself a totally different adventure!!!

*orignally posted here

Whaleshark Season

Photos by Junjie Koh

Where do people go for answers? My friend wasn’t exactly into saintly intercession or parental advice. That left us with the nature quest—a common enough refuge for gaining so-called clarity. We were at our respective crossroads, procrastinating on a decision that could easily define our next five years. To get out of our own heads, we somehow convinced ourselves, we had to get out of urban Manila for a few days. And it seemed to us—as we leafed through ecotourism brochures—that an encounter with the “largest fish in the world” offered just that type of grand-scale experience that would likely, in a manner of speaking, put us in our place.

The prospect of leaping into a giant’s watery domain demanded the reassurance that learning about them beforehand afforded. Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus), butanding to the locals, grow up to 60 feet and weigh up to 40 tons. Happily for us, they feed on plankton. This migratory species finds sanctuary in the protected waters around Donsol, Sorsogon from January to May (March to April being the best times to go).

And so we went. A 45-minute daily flight from Manila to Legazpi City—some don’t mind the 10-hour bus travel from Cubao’s central terminal—followed by a one-hour ride by passenger van (taxi or buses will do too) delivered us to the Donsol tourism office and visitor center (mobile phone +63 927-2330364; butanding_donsol@yahoo.com or ecotourismdonsol@yahoo.com). We paid the registration fees (P100 for Filipinos, P300 for foreigners) and split the P3,500 group fee that covered boat rental and fees for the Butanding Interaction Officer (BIO) and spotter-guide. We brought cash because credit card facilities were not available, at least not yet. For accommodations, we were given plenty of choices: beach resort cottages like Woodland (mobile phone +63 921-9699544) and Amor Farm (+63 917-6941687) and several homestays.

With the practicalities dealt with, we made a gift of our bubbling excitement to our assigned BIO. He turned teacher. An illustration he traced with a finger showed how we were expected to maintain a distance of three meters from the whale shark’s head and body, and four meters from its tail. We were not to get in its natural path. And, by the way the BIO kept reminding us not to touch the whale shark, we could guess many must have lost their heads in the moment and tried just that. “No flash photography, no scuba diving, no unnecessary thrashing in the water…” These giants are clearly shy.

Snorkeling gear could be rented on site but we packed our own. An ill-fitting mask, we imagined, could flood upon us plunging in, and the initial shock of that could lose us the seconds it takes to zero in on a whale shark. It would be equally disastrous to be finning after a better sight of a butanding only to find we’ve slowed because a strap broke and one fin has dropped to irretrievable depths. (My friend is a master at worst-case scenarios.)


We’re also told that no more than six swimmers per whale shark are allowed and only one outrigger boat per whale shark. We joked about suddenly feeling competitive against the other groups scheduled to head out that same morning. Every BIO’s pleasure, our guide confirmed, is for his boatload of visitors to experience the amazement of staring down into the deep blue, only to realize with a jolt that he’s seeing silvery-white spots, and then finally making out the moving outline of a butanding beneath him. No one forgets that first instance of recognition. Especially because nature doesn’t always put on a show. Just the day before, Japanese tourists logged in an entire day without a single sighting.

We hoped for better luck as our boat motored through open water. We even wore our optimism: vests on, fins fastened, masks around our neck. The BIO wanted us ready to jump overboard upon his signal. A half hour later, butanding unseen, we were beginning to feel a little silly about being so dressed for the water yet remaining dry on the boat.

Just when my friend was starting to reconsider the merits of seeking saintly intercession, we got our signal from the BIO. “Talon!” And so we jumped after him, hitting the water in a graceless splash. There was hard swimming in between coughing of saltwater (a far match from the magically serene communion-with-nature we pictured) as we tried to keep up with the BIO who positioned himself ahead like a buoy to keep us oriented. We were soon confused anyway because the BIO seemed to be heading back. “Tigil! Tingin sa baba! (Stop! Look down!)” he yelled over the choppy waves.

The BIO, bless his heart, expertly deduced that the whale shark’s “grazing” direction would cut below our boat. We planted our faces in the water, not seeing very far in the “nutrient soup” that cultivated the algae that fed the krill that attracted the whale shark. Then I felt a tug from behind. Our BIO was Superman. He pulled on my vest with one hand and my friend’s vest with the other and, with a few strong kicks, he got us in place just in time to see a wide, flat head and a small eye from our angle. A capacious mouth sucked water that was strained through its gills, filtering its food. A massive blue-grey body—with its telltale pale yellow dots, vertical ridges, pairs of pectoral and dorsal fins, and muscular tail—glided ponderously underneath us. We could see it was going to dive back into the blue. Taking quick mental snapshots, cropping images here and there, was how I responded to the ephemeral quality and scale of it. Huge, I thought. The entire moment, despite taking less than a minute, was huge—the kind that makes us go: I can do the next thing now.

Later, as the day turned to dusk, our boat cruised the Donsol river lined with mangroves that winked with fireflies. We were still aglow ourselves, momentarily bonded by a powerful shared-experience. Our BIO was happy about notching that for us. He’s had days when he’s counted over 10 whale sharks in a single hour, making one-for-the-day sightings all the more precious. As a younger man, he shared, he wanted to be a seafarer to see the world. Now—with a local ecotourism industry in place that helps preserve the vulnerable whale shark and its habitat—the rest of the world comes to his fishing village and him for their take-away encounter. The whale sharks make him special. Communing with the giants does change everyone.

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.