Philippines Trip Report, William S. Boroughs Style
The airport: hungry flying centipedes swallowing innocent (?) travelers by the hundreds. Ultra hot air spewn from its jet engines for 8 hours straight to Singapore. So many status symbol smelly waters electronic gadgets leathery handbags for sale between the terminals: who needs that? Four more hours in the belly of the flying aluminum centipede, and then, Cebu City, pearl of the South, here I am. No diving yet but jiving about diving and Halo Halo and so many smiling tropical beauties.
Malapascua, home of the thresher sharks, getting up at 4 thirty ah-em, sleepwalking to Evolution, climbing on a banka dive boat, out to the famous Monad shoal. A big giant stride into the warm waters, and down to the top of the shoal in twenty five meters. The ocean is still a dark place just after sunrise, but oh-my, there are some big sharks swimming in circles down there: Alopias pelagicus, the thresher shark, enormously long fins, big eyes, elegance in swimming. Damn vertebrate evolution you master of animal complexity! How could you come up with something as amazing like that fish!
Filipino country festa, delicious spit roast pig, too much beer, too much rum, too much heat, too much of that heat in my head. Karaoke. Angie. Smoke on the Water. I can’t sing, even when I’m drunk.
So many things on top of other things in the ocean, every shrimp and fish and seastar plays a part in the life of its neighbor, fish jousting for territories, others feeding on little things in the sand, others doing nothing, yet other fish are mating like the underwater bunny rabbits.
Road trip down all the way along the island of Cebu, good talk, wise words, funny jokes. Country life, then city life, then country life along the road.
Unbelievable critter heaven on display in Dumaguete, flamboyant cuttlefish, legions of garden eels, shrimps, crabs, sea slugs, fish looking like sea weed, gobies symbiotic with shrimps, corals to warm my heart in the warm waters of Apo island, relaxation on the dive boats, really good cookies, fun times.
Oslob: signs saying whale watching and whale shark watching, no whales, but sharks the size of whales here, called whale sharks. The biggest fish which exist on this fantastic Planet Earth, an impressive experience for me who has seen a thousand different fish. My mate gets a shot of a whale shark with a hot bikini chick, I get a picture of the fish with a fat Korean dude. Male belly adipose tissue is almost the density of seawater and it floats like like a sack of spent saline in-between the shark giants of the ocean.
Flight home, good vibrations, crazy movies watched half-awake, back to Australia, but not for long.
