Paradise is a word that's bandied around all too often. I admit to using it too many times in this blog. I retract all previous uses of the word paradise in order to use it one last time as we have most certainly (with great sadness) just left it.
You'll find paradise somewhere in the Visayas in the Philippines. It's a place that doesn't shove a souvenir t-shirt up your nose, where locals still greet the few tourists that visit with a smile, if you stay at the right place you'll be looked after like family, it's where you can snorkel off the shore and swim amongst beautiful hard and soft corals, turtles and a kaleidoscope of fish, (if you're lucky) you'll have encounters with a couple of the ocean's creatures that couldn't be any more pure even though they appear staged and you'll drink rhum, HEAPS of rhum, with a type of people that seem to have some common personality trait that draws them to the island to begin with and then allows you to become lifelong friends with ease.
Let me expand on a couple of the things that made this place one of our trip's true highlights. Firstly, let me set the scene.
We were staying in a tiny nipa hut just a few metres from the shore surrounded by friendly pooches and trumpeting roosters. Life was simple, life was good.
Dolphins
I find dolphins boring. I think most men find dolphins boring. They're definitely a woman's animal.
Enter the spinner dolphin. So named because of how it acrobatically spins as it leaps out of the water. Interested yet men? I'm not, they're still a bit boring.
However, take me out in a boat as the sun rises up over the ocean and surround it with more than a hundred spinner dolphins launching themselves around you and even through bleary eyes it's hard not to get a bit excited.
Throw in your hut's owner (also your dinghy's captain, Junior) still taking pleasure from seeing this spectacle of nature, despite seeing it every morning, and you're suddenly sold on dolphins. Unfortunately all other dolphins are now most certainly very boring in comparison.
I almost forgot the best thing about the tour - these hats!
Whale Sharks
At the right time of year you can head out in a small pam boat as the sun goes down and snorkel with whale sharks.
When we arrived on the island a Dutch guy had been out seven nights straight looking for the whale sharks but they just weren't around yet. He left the day after we got there.
The night after that a fisherman had a spotted a couple and let Junior know which sent everyone into a frenzy pulling on bathers and grabbing snorkels before piling into the dinghy and flying out to find these creatures of the deep. We looked hard and checked with a couple of fishermen that were on the night shift but it was too late and too dark and we forlornly cruised back in. That disappointment was quashed by Junior's optimism proclaiming that this was a sign that the whale sharks had arrived and we'd see them the following night.
Talk the following day was all about the whale sharks, would we see them? How crazy would it be? Should I surf it?
Four thirty arrived and having dreamt about them during my afternoon nap I told Nix I was full of confidence, for some reason she had more faith in Junior's confidence. So about twenty of us were slowly paddled out in fifteen pam boats by increasingly desperate boat drivers (they'd been coming out for weeks and it's only pay day once you find them). This was a team effort on many levels.
We pushed out into the deep and my luck had come in as I'd landed the hardest working boatman on the island (or the one with most at stake back at his hut, if you know what I mean). After about 15 minutes one had been spotted in the distance by a motorboat and the race was on. I received my cues, "Snorkel ready!!?", "Snorkel on!", "Now!! Go! Go! In!!" and I was in, face to face with the ocean's biggest fish. My heart was racing as I dived in and pumped harder and harder as I tried to keep up with the immense animal but it eventually descended back into the depths.
I jumped back in the boat, heart still racing and feeling pretty bloody blessed that I'd swum within touching distance of an animal that many would spend their entire lives dreaming to see.
It was getting late and the sun was beginning to fall beyond the horizon. I was starting to worry that not everyone was going to see one, in particular my non snorkeling wife.
We bobbed around for another twenty minutes and then out motored the local king of the ocean, part man part fish, Junior. It was then that a few huge fins appeared in the distance and the race was on again. What happened next, I don't think any of us expected.
My new best buds, plankton, were out in force, dancing across the surface of the sea and bringing with them an s load of whale sharks.
What would you say is a lot of whale sharks in one group? Five? Higher. Ten? Bit higher. Fifteen!? Higher still. TWENTY!? Yep, about twenty whale sharks had congregated to put on a show that your wildest dreams could not conjure up. Huge gaping mouths breaching the surface in all directions, massive fins intimidatingly cutting through the water and tourists sh*tting themselves wondering whether they really wanted to get in the ocean with what was a plankton blood bath on top of it.
The energy felt by the group was something else. We were all connected in the moment knowing that we were seeing something truly special, truly wild and nature at the absolute top of its game.
We've seen some great things on this trip but think that that experience takes the cake.
Cockfighting
Cockfights are a Sunday event. We'd been in the Philippines for three other Sundays before finally deciding to head along - partly having not had the chance and partly because I think our mind was subconsciously asking, 'Do you really want to see that?'
Junior led us through the village and to the community's main weekly gathering. A couple of hundred people were milling around a large grassed area that's dotted with palms for shade from the sun where everyone's chowing down on chicken bits (what else?) and waiting for the fights to kick off.
Before two cocks face off in the cockpit their owners go through a long deliberation process in order to determine who they'll be happy to put their pride and joy up against. After a good three quarters of an hour they'd found a match up and we were off.
Us foreigners (about 9 of us) all huddled around a corner of the cockpit and after the formalities (like getting your rooster to bite the others wattle and strapping a blade onto its foot) we were away.
You're immediately transported back to a bygone era. The crowd goes nuts (kids, women and grandmas included) and it's brutal. When placed down to start the fight both roosters' instincts take over and they begin to peck around looking for one final meal. The crowd however wills them together and all of a sudden they look at each other and it's on. Feathers fly, blood is spilt and in an instant it's over with one rooster limply flopped on the floor - tomorrow's Chicken Adobo.
After that first fight I went holy shit, Nix went holy shit and people began to split realising it was far from their cup of tea. It shook us a bit but we got it. We understood the tradition and during the weeks before had seen the love for and connection with that men have with their roosters - this is blood sport but it's not brutality for the sake of it.
Us and a Dutch guy stuck around and we began to bet, began to sink rum and began to get those sideways glances from locals that said, 'Wow, they're actually enjoying it and hanging around.'
The end result was one hell of a cracking afternoon, getting right in amongst it and drinking way too much rhum and then even more back with the crew. Things got messy, we did Australia proud.
The Peeps
But the glue that held all these great experiences together were the staff where we were staying that would provide three delicious meals a day (the best food we'd had in the Philippines) always with a smile on their faces and the guys that we spent our days and nights with.
Two Australians, Two Israelis, Two Danes, an Austrian and a German plus beers and four bottles of rhum are evidently a very lethal combination. This one night started off tamely enough but then the booze began to flow, as did the conversation with someone remarking at one point that they didn't know where to listen as everything sounded weird or interesting.
The night culminated in a beach relay between the men explained in excruciating detail by one very merry Dane. Team Austrialia came through with the goods and I was smothered in a very ecstatic Austrian man. There's a photo. Trust me, you don't want to see that photo.
It was five nights filled with a lot of highs shared with some really great people. It really peaked on the final night when Boris (my Austrian comrade) proposed to Heike (his lovely German partner). "She said yes!!", he yelled from the beach to let us know he'd succeeded. As I said, a special place.
But the name of this special place? You'll have to figure that out for yourself...
