Worst Kept Secrets

We slept kind of late, which felt good. I woke up pretty sore from all the rock climbing the day before, and it seemed like a very good idea to take it as easy as possible. We went to Jammers for lunch, and then met up with Felix and John, who came to our hotel to meet us. It was kind of awkward – it felt much more business-like than yesterday. We got on their boat, and charged off into the sea. It felt great to be on the open water, with the boat rising and falling on the (admittedly small) waves. Our first stop was snorkeling over a reef.

After stopping the boat, John and Felix tossed some bread over the side, and a huge swarm of fish mobbed it. Chris and I very happily put on our masks and climbed down a ladder into the ocean. And the view was AMAZING – I’d never seen that many fish at once in my life. I’m sorry to report, though, that snorkeling didn’t really work for me. At first I kept automatically breathing through my nose, and there was water in my mask which meant nostrils full of sea water (which doesn’t feel good). Then I finally forced myself to trust the snorkel. It took a few tries for me to actually breathe through it instead of using it like an enormous drinking straw (which also involved sea water, and also didn’t feel good). After I got myself breathing through the thing with some success, I had to work on floating with it instead of treading water like a frightened puppy, which is a lot of work in the waves. Then I kept seeing something pretty and going under, forgetting my snorkel was short, which led to inhaling buckets and buckets of sea water, which felt alarmingly like drowning. So I panicked a little bit and started feeling like I was going to throw up, and had to get back in the boat. Fortunately, Chris took to snorkeling like a Clanton to water, though, and he had custody of the camera. And he got really, really, really great pictures.

(I did take this one)

We rode the boat for a little while, which gave me time to collect myself and chug water and stop feeling sick, and landed on Coral Cove, which was pretty nifty. It was a tiny island just off of Boracay, and I assume it was named for the fact that there’s no sand on the beach – it’s almost entirely coral. They had a couple of sea caves there, which were cool and fun – the waves were really strong inside, and the view was beautiful.

Then back in the boat, and we wound up going to Lapus Lapus Beach, which apparently is only accessible by ATV or boat. It was neat – there was a snack hut, us, and a pack of funny little kids, who’d yell at us to watch them jump and dive off the runners of our boat. It was kind of like hanging out with sea otters who could talk (and I don’t mean that to have the vaguely racist overtones that it does). They were just so friendly and ready to play with a couple of grown up strangers. Felix laughed at them and pointed, saying, “ah, the most interesting wildlife in the philippines - the monkeys.”

The beach was a lot trashier – it seemed like an awful lot of things washed up on that beach – sea weed, trash, a dead bird, etc. But it was still a nice place. We went swimming, and Chris shouted for the camera. “I found a jellyfish!” And you would not BELIEVE how fast I got out of there – I’ve been deathly afraid of getting stung by a box jellyfish here, and I wasn’t about to get anywhere near it (compare this to me petting a sea snake), but once again, Chris got a really good picture of it. It took quite a bit of coaxing to get me back in the water after that.

Then we went back to the hotel and out for dinner at a Hawaiian barbeque place, and I had this ridiculous seafood soup dish with more clams than any human could possibly eat and the biggest shrimp I’ve ever seen in my life, still wearing their faces. TASTY as all hell, but it took a long time to eat. After that, we were too exhausted to do anything else but buy some beer and head back to the hotel room and alternate between watching the beach from our balcony and watching a crappy Van Damme movie on tv.

If you only look at one photo set, look at the snorkeling one - it’s amazing, and was mostly Chris’s work.

boat ride, coral cove, lapus lapus beach flickr set