Snorkelling!!

Jovan woke us up at 5AM, which was about 3 hours too early. We needed to be to the beach where the boats are early and Roger, a brother from the area that drives tricycle from Panglao airport to town for a job, was there to pick us up. All 5 of of piled on and it took about 30 or more minutes to get to the boat. I think that here is where

we boarded our boat, maybe one of these is it?

The first stop of the trip was dolphin watching. We drove for maybe 45 minutes ans didn’t see anything. The waves were rolling between 2 amd 4 feet trough to crest and the driver thought maybe they dolphins weren’t out due to that. But about that soon we saw a few, first just breaking the surface, and then jumping. I would estimate there were 20 or 30 boats in a big cluster where the dolphins showed up.

After the dolphins, we headed to Balicasag Island for snorkeling. There was a rain cloud on the horizon and we beat that in and ordered some breakfast. About then it started raining and we took our time eating til the rain quit.

The snorkelling place is definitely a tourist spot with lots of Chinese again and a few white people, and I think I even heard some American English!

If your not familiar with Philippine boats, ours we rode on was about 30 feet long, 40 inches wide, with bamboo outriggers about 6 feet off each side. There was a bench on each side to sit on, built on the outright supports so through the slats in the wood, was the ocean, about 20 inches down! It was powered by a 15ish horse gas engine, which looked like an old Briggs, and the propeller shaft is direct drive off the engine shaft. Sometimes they have a reducing gearbox but the system is the same. When its on its going forward, and if they need to back up, there are paddles or poles for pushing. The rudder has a bamboo pole attached to it. And they seem to prefer them with no muffler, possibly for a lower idle speed.

This actually look almost identical to when we got there. The big boats from Bohol and Cebu park like this and the little boats that get paddled out for snorkelling go underneath the outriggers. Another guy paddled us out to the reef for snorkelling. We snorkelled about at the pin.

Where you can see the bottom, its shallow, maybe 6 feet deep, but the dark water is deep. Like you can only see darkness below deep. The fish were on the ledge and varied in length from 1 inch to one I saw was probably 2 feet. Also we saw some turtles. They told us to take crackers and if you crumbled them underwater, the small fish would come right up to you to eat. And we saw lots of blue starfish!

The beach is all shells and coral which I thought was pretty cool.

Back on the island, we ate lunch at Yellow Star Eatery. Grilled shrimp, pork, rice, and Coke hit the spot after swimming.

The ride back to the mainland was even rougher than the ride out. The waves had built to 4 to 6 feet and made for an interesting ride.

Roger was waiting for us and took,us back into Tagbilaran to Island City Mall (Hi Uncle Mark!) to Chowking for large halo-halos.

Then we walked to the bus stop, said good-bye to James, and got on our bus to Carmen. I’m typing on the bus and its so rough its hard to type! But we did just go through the man-made forest again and the wind blowing in the window was cool and felt amazing!

Back to the keyboard… Jovan did a little shopping in Carmen when we got back and we took a tricycle to their house. They wanted to make chicken for supper with a couple of their tame flock gone wild that still come back to roost in the tree by the house. The goal was to hit them in the head with a slingshot. Jordy and I both got one although neither of them were head shots.

Marlin, the neighbor man, fishes in the freshwater creek behind the house and Jovan goes quite a bit, too. They also get frogs there. So we went with them and walked across the rice paddy dams in the dark and waded the creek for a little while. The natives were quite adept but the white people had a little trouble, not being used to walking down rivers barefoot. Marlin got a fish and Brent found a giant leech.

We had fried chicken from town and fresh stewed chicken and rice and Coke and Sprite for supper, delicious as usual. We visited around the kitchen for a while then got ready for bed. The plan for the morrow is to go to Tacloban and the Leyte boat leaves Tagbilaran at 9 so we have to get up bright and early.