laughing all the way to balicasag

i went to balicasag island for a measly 200 bucks! i am such a cheapskate. Ha!

thanks again to my host (who pulled the right connections at the right time), i hitched a boat ride with german divers going to balicasag. wheeee!!! and i always thought that the word itself: Balicasag, was so intimidating, mean and so hard core meant to be ventured only by true-to-life, licensed divers who know what they're doing. and then there's me, silly me who cannot even swim. oh, but a non-swimmer can get lucky sometimes.


during the ride, i pretty much kept to myself, happily clicking away on my camera, feeling like a pro, changing lenses, experimenting with filters, you know: pretending. a few hundred meters off the shores of balicasag island, the divers silently put on their gears (they never really talked much. all i heard mostly were what sounded like grumbles). but they were nice to me by not taking notice of a little brown stranger aboard their boat. so long as i went out of their way while tanks and regulators and suits were being passed around, i was fine. while they were busily preparing for their dive, i was almost tempted to start taking pictures but was afraid someone might not like it and think i was intruding and perhaps beat me to a pulp with his fins and i would have never lived to tell the tale and gloat among my friends to drool with envy that i got to balicasag for a measly 200 bucks. so i kept my lenses glued to the shoreline.

when all four divers and a dive instructor have finally jumped off the boat, i took out my mask and snorkel. gawd, i felt like a baby with my devices compared to all those "diver gadgets" -- for lack of a better term because i don't really know what they're called anyway. (heehaw!) i started snorkeling around near the shallow area and was amazed of the profusion of marine life. oh but wait, there's more! one of the dive instructors snorkelled around with me (perhaps he was forewarned that i could not swim so he stuck by me and never left my side) and led me to deeper waters. i panicked when the water started turning a deeper blue and could hardly see anything beyond. i learned that it was what divers call "the drop," like a cliff. scary it might have been but i would later find myself swimming over to that portion if only to see more fish, schools of them! forming a myriad of underwater rainbows -- sigh, i can't even describe it. i took comfort much later when i saw some divers far below me (yeah! signs of human life! i'm safe!) and just swam ahead.

around lunch time, we hit the shore of balicasag. i was told that i should have brought packed lunch because the only resort in the island offers pricey dishes (hello, monopoly). i was told that i could buy fresh fish from a vendor back in panglao and have it cooked, then share it with the boatmen, who would always bring the cooked rice. eff it, the fish vendor peddled early and the early bird catches the fish (eh?) and i was not a bird, neither was i early so i didn't catch the fish. ergo, no packed lunch. so i ended up buying kilawin and adobong pusit from said expensive resort and shared them with the boatmen. my friend was not kidding when he said that the boatmen would always bring the rice. because that was all they brought with them. they simply didn't have any viand and was depending on their passenger to provide for them. i gamely sat with them over lunch, shared my food, and ate with my hands, just like they did.