Sea Life in Cebu

The Journey

Our next stop after Hawaii is the Philippines. A place called Moalboal on the island of Cebu to be specific. No good deed goes unpunished, and with all the time changes I have no idea how long this beast of a journey took.

Our first stop was Tokyo, where we crossed the date/time divide, and technically landed in Japan before we left Hawaii. Japan Airlines gives United a run for its money as we get fed in abundance. The array of entertainment, however, is not great. We get our first taste of Japanese toilets, trying to convert from Yen, and try to have a sleep in the airport whilst we wait for our connecting flight:

The next leg is to Manila, where we are again given a proper meal. Although the meal includes fish eggs, some weird sour ‘salad’, and a freezing cold, maybe pickled?, aubergine. The flavours are a lot for dinner/breakfast. We still don’t know what meal of the day it was meant to be. Maybe looking less forward to Japanese food now!

We have a solid seven hour wait in Manila until our connection to Cebu island. I ask our man at the check-in desk if we can get on an earlier flight… sure, for an extra £150 each. Nope.

The heat of Manila is a shock to me, and for the capital city airport, it’s lacking. Whilst we share a bite and discuss next steps, I see an email saying our flight has been delayed for another three hours. That means ten hours in the airport, after I don’t know how many hours since we left the glorious Airbnb of Hawaii. Sigh.

I decide to wander back to check-in and see if we can get a bump to that earlier plane, now we have an even longer wait. After conferring with his supervisor, he confirms we can, free. Absolute win! I am giddy to tell James, and we go through to departures with only a short wait to take off.

It’s a quick up and down to Cebu, where we will spend the night before the final leg to Moalboal. At least here we’ll have a bed to sleep in, instead of an airplane or airport chair.

When James told me we were going to Cebu, for some unknown reason I imagined an island paradise. What it actually is, is the second largest city in the Philippines, with all its expected chaos, dirt, poverty and noisy glory. After our time in Cancun and Hawaii, I’m back to culture-shock.

On the way we see a huge fire burning in an area we assume is a dock. We later find out this was a slum settlement and over 200 ‘homes’ were destroyed. People who already had so little, now without even the sheets of metal over their heads they called home.

Cebu

It’s time for our favourite game of, New Country Admin, interspersed with seeing Dune 2. We have an hour. Go! James tries to find cash. I try to find a sim card. I fail. James succeeds. We rush to the cinema and find out there’s no trailers for films here and have missed the first few minutes. Still, it’s a nice escape from the last [however many] hours of travel we’ve done, and thankfully we stay awake to watch it all. The last time we went to the cinema was in Santiago, maybe five months ago. We can barely believe it.

Post film, it’s back to finish the SIM mission I started, as we are thwarted by technology once more, demanding details we don’t have to register. Eventually, we get online and can get to that bed we’ve been dreaming of.

Aircon on, James crawls into the lower bunk completely exhausted… until the aircon stops. I message the host to see if there’s a trick I’m missing, and there’s a knock at the door. A young teenager dressed in an oversized security guard outfit sheepishly stands at the door and says something. I figure he’s not out trick-or-treating but is the night guard, and I try and explain the aircon situation. He tries to explain we need to move rooms. James is having none of it, already half asleep. The host tells me that we have no choice, the engineer will come first thing to fix it. James, so close and yet so far from that elusive sleep he can usually easily get, crawls back out of bed to pack. I start doing the same, and as I do, my backpack knocks the cable of the aircon and it clicks back on. Whilst I had tried everything else, I hadn’t tried wiggling the cable for a loose wire. I’m just grateful James can get back into bed.

At last. To sleep.

Our final leg down to Moalboal goes even better than planned as we jump straight onto the next bus, taking us in four hours from city chaos to that lush greenery I was imagining. A quick haggle with a tuk-tuk driver and we’re inching our way closer to our final destination. After paying a tax we didn’t know existed, our driver eeks and ows with every single bump of his tricycle tuk-tuk, as though he’s on a comedy skit, and there are a lot of bumps. He drops us off, and points in a direction. We walk. We walk. We walk. The directions on Airbnb are as confusing as always. The Google map address takes us to a private property. The sun is baking us in all our black travel clothes under the weight of our backpacks. We retrace our steps and just ask everyone and anyone. A friendly gringo yells out to offer help, and we ask the reception of his accommodation. “That’s here” the receptionist says. Just the place we’ve walked passed almost three times now. But we’re here. 55 hours since we left the Airbnb in Hawaii. We’re finally, here. Moalboal, a place renowned for its diving. So let’s get to it shall we!

Dive Another Day

We’ve decided to do what’s called a “Discover Dive”, where you learn and practice some scuba diving basics, before getting out for a quick dive to see how you find it. Our guide is Raul, and he teaches us how to go up, down, clear our masks, and replace our regulators (the mouthpiece you breath from) if it comes out. We both seem to manage these skills without issue, and so it’s time to hit the reef! We quickly learn that buoyancy and moving around with flippers on is a right pain in the bum, and we flounder and flail and bump one another like bambi on ice, but underwater. Despite discomfort and unease, we get to see some incredible life in even this shallow part of the reef wall, including Nemo and his dad having a scrub in an anemone just like in the film.

As we exit and debrief, I decide I want to go ahead with Open Water Certification. James is unsure. Time for a rest and decompress, by hiring a moped and driving into the mountains for hours!

Osmeña

One of the land-based activities to do here is to go up into the lumpy highlands of Badian. According to Google it should take just over and hour, so we decide to make an afternoon of it, have a break deciding about the PADI, and make it back before it gets dark. After deciding against a multi-gear motorcycle offered by our hostel… James secures us a hulking beast of a scooter, we agree to a safety word of “CLEAR!” if he feels it start to fall, we don our too-small helmets, check the map, and head off.

We pootle along, moving up along winding roads, as the heat finally dissipates and there’s respite from the heat of the baking Philippines sun. An hour in, however, and we’re still literal miles from our destination. It seems we are going half as fast as Google expected. A recalculation of our trajectory and we agree to keep going and see how far we can get.

Along the way, we get toots, beeps, and “Hey!”s from the locals. We’ve clearly watched too many horror films as our immediate thoughts are that they are trying to warn us about something ahead, and that we should turn back. We spot a wide human-shaped Wickermanesque lump standing stiff in the road ahead… only to realise as we near it that it’s a giant basket of cabbage waiting for pick-up. Proceeding around the corner, fields of cabbages surround us and an oddly placed human-size cauldron sits next to the road. Are we about to be turned into a meal? Assuring ourselves that we are not going to become gringo-soup, we settle in to this new way of interacting with locals, and start waving and smiling back at each tiny human who runs out to great us with glee. I’m able to take in the opening views around us as we go further into the mountains, and the vast fields of cabbages that are being hand-harvested all around.

Eventually, we make it to the Osmeña peak tourist centre. The sun is already lowering in the sky, but thankfully it’s only a short walk to the top now. Still, you have to be accompanied by a ‘guide’.

The guide tries to make standard conversation, saying how English are a kind people, but any question we ask is met by an answer to a completely different question. It’s a sad reminder that I can no longer speak the local language, creating an immediate barrier between us and them.

On the short way up, our ‘guide’ does point out several things (although we don’t understand what they are), and gets us to do various silly poses for photos in various spots. One tourist jokes “you’re not a guide you’re a photographer“, and we realise this is the truth of it. People want photos more than they want information these days, and so they’ve prioritised these skills over the latter. We play along, but it’s an odd situation where we just want to take in the stunning view, and breath the cool, clean air. Whilst our guide wants to make sure we have every photo possible, including mimicking a drone video. We feel old!

Noticing the sun creeping closer to the horizon, we make a swift exit back down, bid farewell to our ‘guide/photographer’, have a square of fudge mum brought out from Otford for energy, and start the long journey back down. The kids now running for high-fives as we pass, and us weaving about eager not to disappoint.

Thanks to James’ great driving, we make it back after dark (oops), satisfied, shattered, and ravenous. The journey has also given James time to decide that he’ll do the PADI with me.

We extend our reservation at the Airbnb, book on to start in two days’ time, book our next flights with this in mind, and James books onto a canyoneering tour tomorrow as a last ditch attempt to injure himself and not have to go ahead (just kidding!).

Over to James…

Jump before you are pushed

I’m picked up by “Jonathan”, alone on his moped outside our hostel and once again I wonder if I’m about to be turned into sausages. Luckily I’m not on the menu today and I’m dropped off to wait with the rest of the foreigners to jump off rocks in a canyon. Halfway there we stop off to get kitted up. There’s over twenty people in a small room. One person adjusts my helmet while another fits my lifejacket, meanwhile three separate people attempt to sell me a locker a waterproof phone case and a Go Pro rental. It’s chaos.

Eventually we’re back in the van and on the road to the start of our plunging adventure. On the way we pass an ‘arena’ which an American in our group recognises as a cock fighting location. Clearly this somewhat cruel gambling game is still legal over here! We reach the start of the Canyoneering trail and are given the world’s shortest safety briefing, Costa Rica rafting this is not. During the short briefing I notice signs on the wall for various gun ranges, shotguns, pistols and rifle shooting available to all.

We start the trail, a forty minute walk in the drizzle while a Latvian family in my group take the easier option. A quick zip line across the valley cuts their walk down to just five minutes. As we wait for them, I’m relieved to see a signpost indicating that the highest jump is “only” 30ft, half the height of a 60ft drop I’d read about on a blog post that left me a little scared.Finally we’re into the cold waters of the canyon river. Many guides provide support for our group. Curiously all their names begin with J including our leader, ‘Captain Jack Sparrow’. They all have the humour of mischievous school boys and crack endless jokes all the way down the canyon to keep spirits high. The first jump isn’t too bad, between 12-16ft high with no time to think about it I throw myself into the water below. First one done. There are a couple of rock slides where you lie backwards and are pushed down a smooth natural ride. A ‘THIS IS SPARTA’ kick recreation for anyone that’s seen 300.

In the calm sections we form water snakes and the guides drag us through while singing “The wheels on the bus go round and round”. I think they enjoy their job as much as the tourists.

Another jump section, this one is 21ft but I spot a few people jumping in from 15ft. “Can I jump from there?” I ask Captain Jack, “No Sir, that is the girl’s jump!” My pride in tatters I jump from the girl’s height, along with the 6ft2 Latvian man and pretty much the rest of the group. One of only two people to jump from higher up is a German girl called Leonie who rightfully states that we came here for the adrenaline so why not do it all.

After a bit more meandering and a short walk the final jump comes into view. The 10 meter/30 ft platform doesn’t look too bad from a distance. We climb up to it and it’s a running jump into Oblivion. Leonie’s words from earlier ring in my ears, this IS what we came here for, I can regain my pride. Only Leonie and an American from our group are in front of me and throw themselves off like suicidal lemmings. I take the run up and commit to the drop. It feels like you’re in the air for an age before the water gratefully swallows you up and absorbs your velocity and fear.

A bit of light relief after the big jump, Tarzan rope swing. Many tourists try to copy the acrobatics of our guides and attempt backflips with various degrees of success. The last part of the adventure is climbing behind a massive waterfall and jumping through it’s powerful liquid curtain to swim out in it’s current. A guide points out a ruined platform beside the waterfall, that’s the 60ft jump that the blog was talking about. Luckily for me it was ruined by a typhoon a few years ago!

Back to Alex

Open Water Crash Course

We enjoy our downtime in this tiny tourist town, mostly enjoying eating out for every meal as food is back to being well within our budget, after scrimping all the way through Central America and Hawaii. James discovers Red Horse, a 7% beer for less than the price of a water in London.

When we’re not eating, drinking, napping in aircon, or dreaming of a rooster massacre, we do our homework of getting through the PADI training material to learn everything we need for the exam. The rest, is practice.

Our instructor is Jen/Jenny/Jenelyn. A tiny young Filipino woman with a beaming smile and calm and ease underwater like she was born in it.

Our first morning involves learning and practicing necessary skills, largely to do with how to check our kit on land, removing, replacing, and filling our masks with water, different skills with the regulators and using our partner’s, and buoyancy control. I fail on a few of these tasks, but Jenny gets me through them, for better or worse.

This part of the course is called ‘confined water’ dives, because they are typically done in a swimming pool. However, we are doing all these out in the shore in the open sea. The wavy, choppy, sea, with a current that keeps us moving even if as we try and stay still. Not only does this add a layer of difficulty to the exercises we’ve seen once on video and now have to recreate in real-life, it’s making me sea-sick.

At our lunch break, I am exhausted, flustered and dissuaded by the whole experience. I ask if James wants to carry on, assuming he has struggled as much as me. Thankfully, the issues he had with Raul have not occured with Jenny, and so it’s actually him (and a big plate of food) that settles my nervous mind (and stomach), and decides to continue. Plus, when have we given up on anything before? We’re not going to start now. Two others who started that same morning don’t return. I feel a bit better realising it’s clearly been a tough few hours and it’s not me that’s the problem.

The afternoon continues with some more floundering under and above water, and my almost drowning myself trying to breathe only through my mouth and failing. All that nasal-breathing training we’ve been doing at Chasing Lights out the window! To my relief, we don’t practice the skills I suck at. On the one hand I’m grateful. On the other, I hope I never have to replace or swim with my mask off in real life, because it is a skill I definitely did not learn to do. We also appreciate that whilst learning all these skills was significantly harder with the buffeting waves, it will have made us better divers having practiced them out in the real environment.

After a grueling first day, our reward is another swim to the reef, much more controlled and calm this time compared to our baby-steps with Raul. The reef so alive and full of colour, completely unphased by our presence. No more headaches and nausea discussions, just the excitement at all the new things we’ve seen.

The next morning we spend out doing more open water practice and checking out the reef, seeing amazing life and creatures. My favourites are the starfish. There’s a thin, bright, blue one that limply wraps itself against the reef wall.

Then there’s the fat, chonky “granulated starfish”, like someone has inflated it with a pump:

As we return to shore, a turtle idly munches on some seaweed in the bay, as if to say, “see, it was all worth it, no?“

Jenny does a fantastic job at not just pointing out all the incredible life down here, but correcting us with many a finger wag and enforcing better habits. Despite the masks and regulators covering every inch of our faces, you can see the joy and excitement each time Jenny spots something to show us, as we respond with our new hand-signal… “Radical”:

Our certification is completed by two more open water dives off a boat this time. Which means taking a “giant stride” off the edge of it. I’ve been struggling to jump into water even into a pool in a bathing suit, so this is a hard one for me, in this huge amount of gear into the ocean deep. But when there’s everyone around you waiting, unknowing the fear-mongering thoughts in your head, there’s no time to give them credence, and so in we leap.

At two new reefs now we do some final practice, and then explore the new scenery. It’s just spectacular. Jenny does a great job capturing much of the life for us on the go-pro, but of course nothing can capture the real thing of just floating in the water and watching an alien world go about its business. We learn that almost everything down here is an animal, things that look like plants, are actually animals. There are these animals called Nudibranches, that are these amazingly colourful slug-like creatures. Here’s some stolen photos from Google to whet your appetite as we didn’t get photos of them ourselves:

These are animals! Not brightly splattered vases from an art class:

A feather starfish, not a plant!

There’s so much life down here that I never knew even existed, and I can understand why people get obsessed with the world down here. Jenny does a fantastic job taking photos for us to commemorate our final open water certification dives:

This is a nudibranch called Spanish Dancer, you can see why! (Definitely thought this was a plant):

We return to shore amid conversations of “did you see…?”, “how cool was…!”, before heading to lunch to do a quick bit of revision as our final exam is after lunch. The exam is less like an exam and more like a reminder of things we don’t know, as we complete it on our phones whilst discussing what the answers might be and tactically go through informing each other which is wrong based on who has the least wrong so far. We unsurprisingly pass.

And that’s that! Apparently we’re now trained enough to go diving just the two of us! Which seems like madness, and not something we have any desire to do. We celebrate with a final rum and coke watching the sun go down, a hearty meal at James’s favourite The Three Bears, and pack up for our next stop, the island of Palawan.

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Adventure – scootering into the mountains, exploring the underwater world

Excitement – seeing so many amazing new things and discovering a whole array of things I never knew existed on this planet

Trauma – almost drowning, roosters, from 3am til 6pm, damn all the roosters