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We arrived back in Manila by bus and with great ambitions. We had booked a flight from manila to Tagbilaran on the southern island of Bohol where we planned to do more diving and hopefully get some beach time but, before that, we were going to attempt a shotgun trip – a nine-hour bus ride each way – to Banaue in north Luzon to see the famous rice terraces of the Cordillera. The logistics were exhausting to think about but the photos of the rice terraces were breathtaking and we’d certainly endured worse travel in the not-so-distant past. By now, our backs are strong and our patience is long.
In Manila, the beginning of the Labor Day holiday weekend, which we knew about in advance and which should have shocked us out of beach bum complacency and into the forward thinkers we usually claim to be, meant that many businesses were closed. We did manage to find one tourist office open but the two young interns, who were running things while the owner took advantage of the holiday, informed us that the single bus leaving for Banaue that evening was full. While part of me was quietly relieved that we would be unable to spend eighteen of the next forty-eight hours on a bus, the other part saw my sweet husband’s spirits almost instantly deflate. We regrouped back at Malate Pensionne, where Aaron made inquiries about hiring a private care and driver for the long journey. After much deliberation, we agreed to let go of our rice paddy dreams and instead change our flight to leave earlier for Tagbilaran. The white beaches and crystal clear waters of the Mindanao Sea would surely take our blues away.
An easy two-hour flight landed us in Tagbilaran around 5:30pm. We took a taxi from the airport to nearby Panglao Island, attached to Bohol by a narrow, man-made land bridge. The thirty-minute drive through the interior of Panglao Island just before sunset was a photographer’s paradise. Houses and huts were scattered along the roadside and wrapped in lush tropical forest. The homes varied greatly in size and appearance. Remnants of what had once likely been grand Spanish villas remained inhabited in scarcely maintained, skeletal forms. Old wooden houses, many erected on stilts, were beautiful in a “Little House on the Prairie” way, despite their need of reinforcement and repair. In many instances, the houses looked condemnable and yet families happily lived their lives inside and around the weathered walls. Nipa huts were the most basic homes with permeable woven walls and thatched roofs. Almost all of the homes looked dilapidated, although an occasional modern Spanish-style home, freshly painted in bright pastels, stood out like a star against the rich green tropical landscape of coconut palms, mango trees, pineapple and banana plants and bright, flowering shrubs. The Philippines is the world’s biggest producer of both coconuts and pineapples, the third largest producer of bananas.
The holiday weekend celebrations were under way in many of the yards as families congregated outdoors: children ran around and squealed with delight as their parents prepared freshly-slaughtered pigs for the spit. It seemed as though everyone was outside and I felt an urge to join in their festivities (keeping a safe distance from the pigs, of course) but it was getting late and we still needed to find a place to stay.
The driver delivered us to Alona Beach, where most of the clustered resorts along the shoreline have their own dive shops. The first place that we tried, Bohol Divers Beach Resort, could only accommodate us for one night in an overpriced air-conditioned room, due to the influx of local holiday travelers, so we decided to check around. As we entered the drive of the next resort, a couple of weary and frustrated backpackers kindly informed us that they had been to fifteen places along the beach and all were fully booked except for the most exorbitant rooms. We thanked them for the tip and walked back to Bohol Divers and took the overpriced room for the night. We would have a couple of San Miguels, get a good night’s sleep, and figure out the rest in the morning.
After fruitlessly combing the beach for modest-priced air-conditioned (a non-negotiable in the hot, sticky tropical air) accommodation, we took a room at Villa Almedilla, a small, family-run hotel located just behind Bohol Divers Resort. The building itself was either newly constructed or undergoing major renovation. Whatever the case, the exterior was a total eye sore of depressing gray cinder blocks and protruding rebar. There were only three serviceable guestrooms and ours was surprisingly spacious and comfortable with hot water, sparkling clean white tile floors, and a powerful air-con unit. We took the room for five nights and, after the first day, the warm smiles that we received each morning and afternoon as we came and went from the beach overpowered the drabness of the building’s façade.
We had come to Alona Beach to dive and dive we did – ten times over the course of five days, dividing our time among Panglao, Balicasag and Cabilao Islands. The islands are known for their spectacular reef walls – tall underwater cliffs covered with colorful hard and soft corals. The water was clear and the marine life vibrant. There were daily, two-dive boat trips around the islands, which afforded us plenty of much-coveted boat time and an early afternoon return leaving hours to linger over a post-dive beer and hot shower before pondering the day’s most pressing decision: where among the beautiful candlelit seaside restaurants to have dinner.
While we didn’t spot any new and exciting big fish, despite the seven species of shark known to inhabit the waters around Cabilao, we did have a couple of fun fish encounters, the first of which involved me and one pissed off triggerfish. Triggerfish vary in size from one to 2 ½ feet and have thick, muscular bodies. We have seen them on many dives; they are beautiful to watch because of their patterned markings and graceful fluttering fins. They are generally non-aggressive and evasive so I hadn’t ever noticed the sharp teeth that protrude from their jaws…until the day that I unknowingly glided into a mother triggerfish’s territory during reproduction season. A triggerfish deposits her eggs in a small hole, dug in the ground. Her perceived threat zone is the cone-shaped area starting at her nest and expanding upward. Triggerfish are known to viciously pursue intruders, including scuba divers (as we had been warned on the Great Barrier Reef) and snorkelers, who swim into their threat zone.
So our little dive group was exploring one of the fascinating reef walls of Balicasag. In one direction, the coral-covered wall extended almost as far up and down as I could see. In the other direction was the opaque blue abyss of the open ocean. I was enthralled with the coral but equally entertained by the weightless sensation of neutral buoyancy. In blue water, it felt like flying. Happily absorbed in my own peaceful, quiet world, I glided out a couple of meters from the wall, just floating and having a look around. I spied the triggerfish swimming toward me from below and watched it casually, assuming that it would divert its course in deference to my sharkish girth. That’s when I saw the teeth…and the fish wasn’t diverting. It was coming full-throttle toward my face. With about three feet to spare, I quickly waved my hand back and forth in front of my face and the fish finally altered its course and cruised past me. Odd, I thought, unconcerned, but certainly an anomaly. The fish was out of sight and I continued my careless float.
A few minutes later, my bubble of serenity was burst by the clanking noise of Aaron banging his metal pointer (our latest acquisition) on his metal air cylinder. He was trying rather frantically, with wild eyes and hand gestures, to communicate something but I had no idea what. After another minute of trying to translate his sign language, I gave up and kicked closer to the reef wall. I randomly glanced behind me and caught the tail fin of the triggerfish swimming away. It wasn’t until after the dive that I came to understand that, in the minutes between my initial deflection of the fish and my final kicks toward the wall, the triggerfish had made repeated attacks on me, darting frantically back and forth between her nest and me, the unwitting intruder. I was oblivious – I didn’t feel a thing. Had she found a spot of exposed flesh during one of her advances, her strong jaw, sharp teeth, and raw determination could undoubtedly have drawn blood, making for an unhappy little diver but she would have had trouble causing any lasting damage beyond a little nip and a great fish tale. My first thought was to scour the beach restaurants for one that had triggerfish on the dinner menu but then thought better of it. From one Mother Hen to another, I could hardly fault her for protecting her babies. We now have a designated hand signal for “You’re getting attacked by a triggerfish!”
The other fish encounters were fun and much less dramatic. Two small remoras – small suckerfish that often attach themselves to sharks, rays, turtles and larger fish – stalked Aaron for fifteen or twenty minutes of a dive, at one point even attaching themselves to his cylinder. They were nonthreatening and Aaron was completely unaware as they wiggled around his back and between his legs. On another underwater expedition, two large batfish swam between Aaron and me for almost the entire dive. It is always exciting when a sea creature interacts with us; as divers, we are like alien invaders under the sea. Most fish will scurry away, propelled by their survival instincts but some are wondrously curious and friendly. You look into their soulless fish eyes and feel as though you’ve made a connection. It almost makes you want to give up seafood…almost.
While I love life as a little mermaid, my merman and I agree that we need to let our gills dry out for a while. Our two weeks in the Philippines have been well-spent but, admittedly, we’ve seen more sea than land. We called our taxi driver, Junior, who had left us his card when he dropped us off six days earlier, and made arrangements for a private day tour of Bohol. Suddenly remembering the lush tropical forest that lay beyond the beach, we packed away our scuba masks and geared up for the next great adventure.
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