Bicol

Considered the most perfect cone in the world (the Japanese say otherwise), we went off to Region V, Bicol (they call it Bicolandia) region to check out Mt. Mayon and the famous Butanding (aka Whale Shark) experience in Donsol. Here are the different views of Mayon that I took in the car throughout our trip:



If you notice the top, there's some smoke coming out. It started smoking, or "showing activity", at the start of April and it's been on Alert (2, I think) ever since. Throughout our entire stay, I thought they were all just clouds at the top even though my brother kept saying it was smoke. It just didn't look like smoke. It was still, for one, and didn't look like it was in any way flowing as smoke is wont to do. But on our last day, on our way home, I finally actually saw smoke.



Still, it was beautiful in a dangerous kind of way. Cool. And isn't the smoke's path weird? It comes out the top, slides down about a quarter of the way down the mountain, then floats back up. I always thought smoke just sort of drifted upwards...

Anyway, we spent the whole day 24th of April driving to Legaspi City (it's a 12-hour drive; left at 5am and arrived at 5pm) and while the long drive wasn't too bad (I doubt my butt will ever be the same, though), the really annoying thing was that: there. Was. No. Music.

We were in the province, waaay provincial, and it's mountainous and all that and there was barely any signal. I came prepared with a CD player, a lighter thingie adaptor, the casette connection thingie from CD player to car casette player, and two CD cases with my CDs. Unfortunately, the stupid casette player of our van had the automatic switch thing - as in, it automatically switches from side A to side B when playing an ordinary casette - so the player kept switching from side A to side B, but the connection thingie doesn't have that so I end up getting bits and pieces of the song; kept jumping. Very annoying. Because of that, it was a looooong 12 hours. The music would've made it easier, but... hay... oh well. That's life.

There was one place in Bicol that I really wanted to see and that was the Cagsawa Ruins - the one that you see in almost all postcards and any picture of Mayon - so we did. It was kind of a let-down and I was really irritated coz the bell tower, the last remaining ruin of the entire town/village, was covered with grafitti. No stone unturned or unwritten, as the case may be. I hate vandalizers.



Then on Thursday, we headed off to Donsol, which is about an hour away from Legaspi City, off to the Whale Shark encounter, another thing I was really looking forward to. We lucked out and were able to make reservations on a beach-front resort. The thing with the Whale Shark, locally known as Butanding (mistakenly called Tambunting [as in, the pawnshop] by my mom and Batading by my brother) is that you rent a boat for a maximum of 4 hours and you spend it going around and around the open ocean, trying to look for Whale Sharks. For each boat, you have a spotter (he spends all his time standing on a bamboo pole above your boat, scanning the area), a captain (mans the boat), an extra guy (helps around), and a BIO (Butanding Interaction Officer - he dives with you, provides info and can answer your questions about the Whale Sharks). When the spotter yells out that he's seen one, the BIO and the "divers" (those who rented the boat who want to jump into the water and swim with the Butanding) jump down and swim towards the Whale Shark. You just stay above it and watch it swim or, if you're good, you can go down two. A few rules, though: no touching, you must be 3-4 meters away from them, no more than 6 divers per Butanding, and only 7 people in a boat.

We went there on Wednesday and was on the boat from 10-1 and got to see one Butanding twice. Unfortunately, I panicked and stuff and wasn't really able to swim for the second viewing. I was able to see the first though, for a little while, because the Butanding got all shy and dove down.

But when we went out on Friday. Oh, wow, that was the BEST!!! We left at 9 and an Australian researcher, Annie, with us. Check out who went diving:



Haha just kidding. I just let my nephew borrow my snorkle set for a while. Anyway, the Whale Sharks we saw were huge! The one we saw on Wednesday was about, 10-12 feet, maybe. But the first one we saw on Friday - WOW! About 15-18 feet, tops! And so was the second one and the third (Annie and I were kidding around coz the second or third one looked like an albino shark and I was saying that it was an American while the one that came after that, a dark/black one, was a Filipino). We saw lots! There was this one Butanding that was so friendly, it swam around in circles around us, totally coming up close. How close? Well, let's just say I was the one backing up to avoid touching him and to avoid coming within, well, 2 meters of his body. Sadly (or a really, really, really good thing?), I wasn't fast enough this one time and the upper part of his tail swiped my stomach as he was swimming away. It was awesome! He was sooo friendly! I just kept going "wow" underwater.



On the tenth and last jump, unfortunately, water got in my goggles and snorkle when I jumped, so I came out sputtering (or trying to), when the boat's bamboo sides hit me on the back of my head. I went up again sputtering. I was okay but I wasn't able to see or swim alongside the last one, although Annie said that it went down pretty quick. And when I finally made it in the boat and I saw down, that was when I noticed that I had 3 scratch marks on my left arm, 2 of which were bleeding. And then, a few minutes later, I realized I had another scratch mark, a smaller one, that was also bleeding. The thing about injuries in the ocean? You don't feel a thing until you're out of the water. I was joking around saying, "good thing there aren't any sharks here" since I most likely bled on the water also.



Looks like bite/claw marks, doesn't it? I'm not sure where it came from, but it must've come from the other bamboo that was tied perpendicular to the bamboo that hit my head. It looks like nylon rope slashes... I dunno.

Anyway, we got this:



after and this was definitely an experience I want to repeat.

Saturday, we came back and passed by Lake Buhi on the way home, home of the world's smallest (edible) fish. One handful of water can contain hundreds of those little fishes. The trip home took 16 hours total. We left Donsol at 6 and arrived home at 10pm.