Island Hopping Around

12 hours, 8 dive spots, 2 freshwater lakes, 2 lagoons, 2 meals cooked on the ship, 2 tubes of aloe gel, 1 WWII shipwreck, and 1 Filipino beach party.

Just a small taste of what we've been doing the past two days of island hopping.

When looking at our itinerary, I think we were imagining two days of different beaches and splashing in the water. Then we saw that we were going to eight places over the two days, and we thought, "Yikes! I hope we don't get bored of beaching."

Nope. We didn't. No boredom here.

Only because we didn't actually get beach lounge-y time.

No, no, don't be disappointed for us. We got to do way cooler things. Like so much snorkeling that I have  a slight bruise on the bridge of my nose. And eating delicious fish cooked just for us by the captain and his sidekick. Not to mention that we have wicked sunburns on our shoulders since that part is constantly out of the water. Hence the two tubes of aloe despite the fact that we overloaded on sunscreen. Nuts.

Anyways, on with the show!


Those bumpy bits in the background are what we centered around for the majority of our visits.

See that orange glow? Here's what it looks like on me:


Mark said that it looked like a highlighter pack threw up on me. Keep in mind that you can't see the bright yellow swimsuit I'm wearing...

And I promise I didn't keep this stellar outfit on. (Sorry, Melissa!)

Some of our visits we're just to see the coral around a teensy rock of an island.



Our favorite one of those was actually around a World War Two ship wreck. You could only see part of it without having to dive underwater for that. We actually had more fun playing with the fish at that spot. They were very funny! One of them kept swimming straight at Mark's face and then swimming away. One of the other boats kept dumping chunks of rice into the water that the fish would then swarm over to eat. We're talking hundreds of tropical fish, the kind that you see in the movies. So cool.

The rest of it looked something like this:


Pulling up to a freshwater lake...


Tying on to another boat, just like ours...


Climbing up and down some stairs...


Stashing our stuff on some rocks...


Seeing the lay of the land...


Time to jump in!

At the end of yesterday's excursion, we went to a beach for our last hop. While we were looking for a peaceful paradise, we got a major Filipino fiesta instead!


There were probably 100 people between the small beach, the handful of boats, and all the water. The most hilarious part was that the major entertainment seemed to be the multiple potato sack races going down.

We walked around a bit, had two boys chasing each other in circles around us, and then headed back for the night.



Sleep.....

This morning was pretty cloudy, but the weather held out nice for us.

Time for another lake to snorkel in!



Remember how I said we needed to climb up and then climb down to the lake? This is from the top of such a climb, looking back to where the boat was parked.

Not bad, right?

After this was a rock to dive around. I was taking a break and lounging on the boat while Mark splashed around, when I noticed this rock sticking up in the water. Wait, there's this weird yellow and black striped protrusion... Wait, it's floating...

It's a turtle!! A turtle swimming by! Probably 18 inches!

I was so surprised (and it took me so long to figure out what it was) that by the time I got my camera out and up to my face, he was nowhere to be seen.

Bummer.

Mark was probably 20 feet from it, but could not see it from the water.

Next stop was the Twin Lagoons, connected by a tiny little tunnel. You can kind of see the light gray opening by the rock in the water.  The stairs are there so that you can access the other lagoon when the water level is too high to use the water way.



The water was cold here, so we didn't stay long and moved to our next spot, Mark's favorite dive spot of them all.



It was nice to have the place to ourselves for awhile before the water got too choppy to swim in.

We decided to call it quits then and had a very splashy boat ride back to town. (Our two boat guys might have been laughing at all the cackling I was doing.)

Or night has been eventful in that we found a nice coffee shop with good WIFI. Cause for celebration! We also watched a little of the local Nativity play, done with jingle pop Christmas music and animatronics. We came in just in time for the camels to be singing the introduction.


Not in view is a "cloud" that hides an angel that comes down for his part of the story.

We would have stayed except the mosquitoes have been especially vicious today.  :(

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve in Manila!

Thinking of you and wishing you were here!

How to See Coron in a Day

Today was a sunny day in Coron! We had a some nice views from our deck and the hotel's dining room.





Our plan for the day was to meet up with our local guide, Noriel, who would take us around in his tricycle (actually a motorcycle, but with elaborate attachments).

He took us to the market we walked through yesterday to pick out food for lunch. Then off we went to Cabu Beach.





We even found a friend in the sand. Say hi!



Noriel grilled our lunch: fresh fish, eggplant, some rice (not grilled, but still warm from buying it from the market), and some dipping sauces for flavor. Way yummy, and Mark even did well with eating a whole fish!


The Filipinos are on to something with those foil plates... Smart!

After splashing around a bit more, we decided we weren't hot enough (that was total sarcasm). Off we went back through the bumpy, jungle-y roads to some hot springs.


This was out of the back of the tricycle.









And this is what the hot pool looked like right before we gingerly tip-toed in.



Wow, that made us find our sunburns! It was nice to overheat in the water and then come out and be cooler in the previously too-hot air. Definitely tiring though, so back we went to our hotel for showering, laundry, dinner, and more card playing.

And hopefully the internet works today.

And double hopefully, I win more rounds of cards. Mark's still up 7-4.
Unacceptable!

Sneak Peek

I forgot to show you how awesome we look in our wetsuits when we went diving yesterday. Behold:



Beautiful, right??

Mark also had some pictures from our hike that we couldn't upload yesterday, but we have them today!





Cow!

We woke up early today since we had a drive back to Manila to catch a plane to Coron (Busuanga). I wanted to snap a few shots of the killer stairs outside of our room at Planet Dive before we left.



The drive was uneventful except for the part where I was queasy. The flight itself was only an hour on a plane with propellers. Cebu Air's tag line is "Have a Fun Flight!" so halfway through, there was a "whoever raises something red in the air first wins a prize" game. Three rounds gave the winners merchandise from the airline. We landed in Coron to this:


We think it says airport, but who knows? Literally in the middle of a jungle.

Forty minutes later brought us to our hotel, Sea Dive, right on the water.




Off the bridge to our hotel.


It was cloudy with bursts of rain all afternoon, but we got a nice walk in to explore this little town.







We found the market!











We also found some evidence of typhoon damage, but everything seems to be going ok otherwise.


It's a whole yard of tree debris.

This evening has been quite wet and rainy, causing us to lay low. We got soaked when we went next door (to the next pier) for dinner, and other than that, we've been playing lots of Gin Rummy. I'm not too happy that Mark has won 4 games out of 6, so you'd better believe that I'm calling for revenge!

Wish me luck!

Downs and Ups

Today started with another excellent breakfast before we met Leo, the owner of our tour company, our guide for the day, andour dive instructor. Picking us up from the luxury of our first few days (minus the sunburn), he drove us down the road to another place: Planet Dive, known for their backyard access of the Anilao Marine Reserve. It's a lot closer to nature and felt wonderfully real.


From the deck.



As soon as we got here, we dropped our stuff, donned our suits, and went down to the deck below to be introduced to SCUBA. We weren't actually going to do any work; the amazing way this excursion works is that you suit up without fins and get dragged along by a dive master holding a handle on your tank. He then shoves you up, down, and around so that you can look at all the amazing things underwater. And amazing they were.

We saw the widest range of colors there is to see in the world. Electric blue starfish, Nemo fishes, black frog fishes that walk on the ground, a school of baby barracuda, a gigantic silver school of jack fishes, wrasse fishes (look that one up, it looks like a Lisa Frank binder spit up a fin-ny friend), wavy clam shell that could fit a golden retriever covered in all sorts of wonderful texture... We could even touch the spotted flesh of that clam before it got cranky and sucked all its insides back in. Corals and anenomes galore. And  the most incredible part was that it was only 30 feet down and starts when you get about waist deep in water. BAM! Duck your head underwater to practice breathing through a hose and you see colorful fish.

Just fascinating.

We were underwater for 30 minutes before we had to go back up and out of the water. Just because we couldn't resist, we put on fins and did a little snorkeling in the same area we just were in, taking time to play in the shallower parts of the reef and bother the fishes with my terrible fin kicking.

After another delicious lunch where I ate way too much, we got ambitious and decided to go on a hike to the top of the island with Leo. "Short" he said. "A little steep." ...

He's lucky I didn't toss my cookies along the way.

He's very patient, luckily, because it was completely worth it in the end.






That little wake of the boat is right about where our first resort was.




My subtle t-shirt. Can you even tell I'm in the picture?? I'm right next to Mark.


Cow!! Moo!

An easy run downhill and we rewarded ourselves with a lounge on the deck, watching the sun set and waiting for dinner.







To cap off a wonderful day, Leo got some of the guys hanging around to knock down some green coconut for our enjoyment. Some quick work with a small machete...



And we were enjoying some very refreshing juice.



A pretty wonderful day, really.

And time for some well-deserved sleep.

Shh!!!

Zzzz...