Goodbye to the sweet stringfields

A couple of days ago, we took our last trip together to Apo Island. It's listed as one of the 10 best dive spots in the world. We didn't dive b/c it was pretty expensive b/c of the boat ride out there as well, but the snorkelling was also supposed to be just as good. There were two main snorkel spots. The sanctuary and the turtle area. We snorkelled twice at the sanctuary and once at the turtle area. It definitely lived up to its word. THe snorkelling was fantastic. The diversity of soft corals and fish was unbelievable. And saw the largest aggregation of plate corals I had ever seen. Bigger than the size of a basketball court. Saw huge "schools" of clownfish. Clownfish don't really school, but it was just an area so dense with them, they were everywhere...like a city. Lots of trumpet fish and trigger fishes and pufferfish. At the turtle sanctuary we saw 3 turtles very close. It was an especially good interaction b/c typically turtles swim quickly away (yes quickly), but these ones you could get quite close to and just float and watch them eat, and in very shallow clear water. Unfortunately the day was quite marred for me b/c I realized that my camera had broken. We also did a little hike up to the top of the island to the lighthouse where we watched some local boys fight spiders. The boat back and forth between the island was pretty fun b/c it was not a very seaworth vessel and we were all completely soaked by water splashing onto us in huge buckets.


Apo island had a special interest to me b/c in Dr. Walser's class we had a read a book called the enchanted braid about the importance of coral reefs and a couple of chapters were reserved for apo. Apparently 20 years ago or so the people in the village were starving and poor b/c they had overfished and dynamited the reef so they had much diminished fish catches. They aggreed with the help of the WWF and Smithsonian to set up a sanctuary that was absolutely off limits to fishing. THe rest of the island could still be fished. This gave an area where fish could breed, grow up, etc and then move out to the rest of the reef around the island. 5 years later and the fish catches were back to normal, plus they were now making money on ecotourism. One of the best documented examples of conservation making life better for local people

that night, we went out for our last karaoke together and then I took lucas out for his belated bachelor's party (no one was able to throw one for him b/c they had snuck off in secrecy to the philippines to get married). We sang some more karaoke, went dancing to at a club, bought some handles of Tanduay rum to drink by the ocean and then ended the night in a pretty interesting conversation with a lady boy.

Yesterday was a difficult goodbye for me to say the the stringfields. I hung out a bit trying to do errands in dumaguette before flying to manila. From manila I took a bus to batangas where I stayed last night in a kind of sketchy, rent by the hour hotel, but it was late at night and all I could find and batangas is definitely not a place tourists go, but the bus to anilao where I'm headed today had already stopped when I arrived at midnight.

Today at 6pm I head off onto the borneo explorer for 8 days of unlimited diving at Tubbataha reef and apo (a different apo) island. I'm excited b/c it will be the first time I've slept and lived on a boat. Doubtful that there will be internet on the boat, so I'll see you all in 8 days.