coral climbing

there's a ton of diving in the philippines, since there's about 7000 islands. choosing where to go is the only hurdle we encountered. we heard that numerous sites were all very good, and the more we asked people what they recommended, the more we had to choose from. after about 3 days in manila we were tired of smelling the exhaust and had finally made up our minds to dive near the island of palawan. we tried to fly last minute only to find that all flights were sold old. so we took a bus south out of town, toward the coast, and a ferry to sabang on mindoro island. as we hopped off the boat, tons of locals surrounded us to offer hotels, bikes, diving, food, jewelry, and hand carved pool sticks. we've grown accustomed to ignoring peolple in such situations just to avoid the distraction. filipinos seem to be a lot more considerate of tourists than hecklers of other countries, so it's a nice change. they know when to say when, which makes it a lot more enjoyable to shop for things and talk to people.

we started diving the next morning with a local dive master. the ocean currents and recent rain made the water a little cloudy, but huge schools of fish and coral made up for it. scott's battle wounds from songkran made it a little painful for wearing fins and a wetsuit, but nothing a little neosporin and a dozen bandages couldn't fix.

later we took a day trip to a steep reef on verde island, an hour by boat from sabang. there we did three dives in the afternoon, and every one of them was amazing. i've never seen so many fish in my life. the current was a lot stronger, and there were parts of the dive where we could see fish swimming in place against the drift, as if they were on an underwater treadmill.

the last dive was called washing machine, and the name didn't register in my head until the last portion of the dive. at first it seemed pretty normal, we just moved toward the bottom of the sea and around the underwater cliffs of the island. at one point i saw scott exploring some nearby reef, but then was suddenly out of sight. so i swam over to see where he went, only to find that he was clinging onto some coral as the surging current picked up - his hair blowing around like it was being fanned. as i started moving toward him i could feel the current pulling at me as well, so i grabbed onto some coral and made slow moves toward him. the dive master showed up from behind me and pulled scott closer to the other side of the cliff where the current was manageable. apparently, scott was just testing out the current, and then had gotten a charlie horse from trying to fight it. by that time the rest of the diving group had wandered our direction and everyone was clambering to find a good hold; underwater cameras in one hand, coral in the other. some of it stained my fingers blue.

the divemaster signaled for all of us to follow him, making slow moves close of the reef, below the strongest part of the drift. scott started yelling something to me through his respirator, which i couldn't understand. later he told me it was like underwater rock climbing, which was exactly what it felt like. some coral is rough, smooth, slippery, spongy, fragile, and everything in between. it seemed a little destructive at times, especially when pieces would snap, but we tried to keep it low impact. if we wanted to move fast, we just let go and drifted, trying not to run into anyone else. the whole experience was wild, and when i surfaced later, i was dizzy and disoriented. the waves were enormous on the surface, and climbing onto the boat became a task. i found only one scar on my hand, a nice souvenir from the coral. scott's fingers took weeks to return to normal.

i was starving when we arrived back at sabang, though it was several hours before we ate. the restaurant we picked (recommended as one of the best on the island) apparently had only one cook, and probably fewer frying pans. we waited almost two hours for our food to arrive, hoping the quality of the meal would make up for it. the frustrating part of filling up on food you don't like is that you're too full to do anything about it afterward. for a couple of kids who enjoy eating as much as we do, it was more than a bit unfortunate. luckily, that was about the only inexcellent food we encountered in the philippines (unless you count our munching on the duck embryos.)