Whale Sharks and Disaster Relief Work

The blog entries will be backwards. So, this happened before I got to the island of Busuanga (where I am now and am currently trying to find a way off the island to Manila. It's harder than you think.).

I arrived in the Philippenises after a two hour flight from KL and headed straight up to Baguio where I got stuck for the night at the YMCA. There was some misinformation involved and I was told that there was no more buses running for the day to Banaue in the north. It would have been all good but then the power went out and it was freezing cold in the room overnight. I wore two sweaters, a t-shirt, three pairs of socks, two pants and a blanket and I was still freezing! On the upside, I did get a two dollar haircut at the mall and saw tons of men taking leaks all over the place. Public urination seems to be a bit of a problem in the Pinos. Many a driveway will have a hand painted sign that reads "please don't urinate here".

Further up north, I spent a night in Banaue where I was transferred from the basement dorm room to a more cozy little place upstairs because the owner felt uncomfortable having a young lady on her own in the basement. I met a Filipina-old-Swiss-dude couple. The story of their get together sounded a little shady because she kept mentioning that he was a friend of her husband's...I'm not one to judge but I think she was doing the nasty with the old white dude. I caught them holding hands but apparently they had seperate rooms... right.

We took a jeepney out to Batad the following day. Located at an altitude of 1500 metres (that's over 4500 feet) the rice terraces here were handmade by the Ifugao people over 2000 years ago. Some of the terraced fields are sloped at an angle of 70 degrees, forming a steep stairway. The jeepney dropped us off at the top thetrail. The bowl shaped valley of the terraces was still a 45 minute hike over a steep ridge from the top of the trail.

The wet season is still in full swing up in the north. Mud marked the way along the hike. Each field is prepared by a famer that trudges the mud with his feet in the field and then forms a protective wall around the terrace. I nearly slipped at every step and our guide, a local teenage girl, trekked ahead of us in flipflops, almost skipping, as if she were in a field of daisies and not at the edge of a muddy wall that dropped off 40 feet!

Back in town I headed straight to the bus terminal to purchase a ticket to Manila. Then it was on to the internet cafe to book a flight to Legaspi. I asked the guy next to me what date it was and within ten minutes I scraped my flight plans, choosing instead to take the bus with him to Legaspi. Tim told me about the volunteer work he was doing as part of the Hands On Disaster Relief team in Legaspi after their devastating typhoon season last November. I pretty much decided within a few hours of the conversation that I would head there to help out for a couple of days. Helping would mean shovelling lahar, volcanic ash, and transporting large pieces of metal to and from worksites.

Our bumpy journey took over 24 hours with a switch in Manila and some roosters crowing me awake on the bus at noon. We finally arrived soaked to discover that the entire Hands On crew was invited to dinner at retired a retired Peace Corp and volcanoligst's house by the sea. It was lovely to meet everyone there over a relaxed meal. The fifteen volunteers are made up of Americans, a guy from Cameroon, an Englishman and Canadians. Everyone knows Solo in town because he is the first and only black person people in this part of the country have ever met. They love him!

Legaspi sits in the shadow of Mount Mayon, the world's most active volcano. It erupted last fall and the ash from its surroundings along with more than a few boulders were blown around town burying buildings, vehicles and sadly, people when the typhoons hit in November. The landscape is devastating, dotted with palm trees that look like a million sad candles swaying back and forth as far as the eye can see. Roads were destroyed. Roofs blown away and the town buried in volcanic ash.

On my first day to the work site I was informed that a baby had been found in the debris a few days ago and that an elderly man is still buried there. Flies were all over the place as I started digging out the kitchen.

On my way back to the work site the women (everyone works to rebuild here) called out "sexy lady" and "are you from Pakistan?" after me. The 'sexy lady' part was probably due to the fact that I was wearing a tight white t-shirt. It doesn't take much when you backpack to pull off 'sexy' in a town devastated by a natural disaster.

Hands On also agreed to help rebuild a school in nearby Alimsog. This meant transporting the raw materials to the town by boat. Mainly it meant loading and unloading the boat for half the day from 8am to 3pm. The towns people and kids were excited to see us there.

All this work did not distract me from my initial objective: swimming with whale sharks. I had decided that this would be a must before I ended my trip. Dan, Susie and Tim decided to join me. It was one of the best experiences of my life! Whale sharks are the largest living fish. We did five jumps. On our first two jumps I swallowed half the sea and by jump three I had the snorkel gear all figured out. Tim, Susie and I swam with whale shark number four for over fifteen minutes. Right at the head! It would dip down and then reappear and change course and we'd follow along. These fish live up to 100 years and the one we swam with was 30 feet long. I couldn't take any pictures underwater but here is what these beautiful creatures look like.