Finding paradise

Hey, Marc,

I watch you every week on Sports Unlimited and I’m so jealous because of all the places you get to go. Knowing that you’ve been everywhere, I hope you can help me with a little problem I have. My cousins are visiting from the States this month and I want to take them on a special adventure. I was hoping you could tell me what are the best places to take them to? They’ve traveled a lot around the world, so I’m not sure where to take them apart from the usual places like Boracay and Baguio. Any suggestions?

Stumped Tourist Guide

It’s my pleasure to do my bit in promoting all the wonders this country has to offer! Of course, Boracay is always on the agenda for any tourist from overseas (my sister loved it there even though she’s surrounded by beaches in Sydney), however, if your cousins are pretty well traveled, they might appreciate something a bit different from a beautiful tropical island (of which Bora is certainly one of the world’s best!).

So where else to go? Well if you watched Sports Unlimited last Saturday night, you would have seen the episode where we featured all the fun things you could do this summer. In case you missed it you can catch the replay tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. on ANC. Apart from the great diving you can do in Palawan or surfing in Siargao, another interesting adventure is whale and dolphin watching in Bohol. Lots of fun and it’s pretty exciting when you see those gorgeous marine mammals!

However, if you want something really special, then have I got the perfect trip for you! I just got back from taping another episode of Sports Unlimited in Donsol, located in Sorsogon, Bicol. Can I just tell you that I’ve been with the show for over three years now, and that has got to be one of the absolute best trips we’ve ever had! You’re probably trying to figure out what we did there, right? Whitewater rafting? Barefoot skiing? Mountain biking? Nope! Something soooo much better! We went swimming with 30-foot sharks!

Now before you start calling the mental institution to have me committed, the sharks we swam with are in fact the biggest fish in the ocean, the whale shark (butanding), and they are completely harmless. They do have teeth, but only very small ones as they are filter feeders that merely swim through the ocean with an open mouth and collect the plankton, krill and tiny shrimp that make up their diet. Anything even slightly larger (like a fish, or more importantly, you and me) that accidentally swims inside will be regurgitated straight away as it can’t be digested properly.

While some people might feel kind of scared before they see them, almost everyone who has actually been with one in the water is anxious to jump right back in and see more as soon as possible! When we went, our underwater videographer and environmentalist Korina Escudero warned us that we might get tired of them after a while, or be sharked out by the end of the day. On the contrary, we were all so eager to keep looking for more that we even spent the morning of the last day (when we were flying back to Manila) up at 5 a.m. and out on the water by 7 a.m. looking for them.

Now for anyone who knows me personally, it’s quite a feat to get me out of bed that early, but on this occasion I was more than happy to get up with the sunrise rather than going to sleep with it for a change. The reason of course was the chance to have more interaction with these enormous creatures. And I wasn’t kidding earlier when I said they were 30 feet long, which is no exaggeration at all. To put it in perspective, 30 feet is roughly the height of a three-storey building, and they can even grow to twice that size!

Have no fear though; these sharks really are the puppydogs of the sea. OK, maybe grossly overgrown puppydogs, but essentially they’re completely gentle and safe to swim with. Before you go out, you have to watch a video presentation where you learn more about the whale sharks, what’s being done to keep them in the area and how to properly interact with them in the water. Then you’re assigned a "Butanding Interaction Officer," a boat and a spotter to go searching for them in the bay. You really need the spotter as well, as he’s the guy that stands on the mast of the bangka and keeps his eyes peeled for those magical dark shadows in the water or that telltale fin lazily cutting through the surface. Once spotted, the boat maneuvers into the path of the whale shark, and the guide lets you know when to jump in with your snorkeling equipment. If it’s timed just right, it’s only a matter of seconds before you see this enormous gentle giant up close and personal. They’re completely unthreatening, and even our writer Jackie, who normally avoids deep water at all costs, was ecstatic! She was eager to jump back in every time!

We spent a total of three days swimming with these incredible creatures, and managed to see 30 of them in that time; sometimes getting so close we had to swim out of the way in case they accidentally bumped us. It was truly magical to be close enough to see them look at us with their tiny eyes, or float right above their heads in the slipstream they create in the water looking down on their beautiful spotted back. Some people are even luckier and see up to 45 butandings in a single day!

This is something that your cousins would definitely get a kick out of, and it’s highly unlikely that they’ve seen anything like it before. Whale sharks are quite rare, and many scientists argue that we have the largest worldwide concentration of these creatures in Donsol. Tourists have been paying thousands of dollars for a chance to swim with them at an outer reef of Western Australia, and we have a much bigger and friendlier population right in our own backyard of Bicol. Not only that, but they’re pretty easy to get to and very inexpensive. You have the option of taking a plane or bus to Legaspi or Naga, and then a van to Donsol (one hour from Legaspi and two hours from Naga). In case the flights are full, you can also opt to fly to Masbate and take a boat across. Once there, the accommodations are very reasonable, around P1,000 for an aircon room, or just a few hundred for a fan room (the nights aren’t too hot anyway). We actually stayed at Amor Beach Resort in nipa huts on the beach and had a great time, not to mention the food was so inexpensive and tasted fantastic (a full set meal for six only costs P300)! The renting of the bangka, and hiring a guide and spotter costs P2,500 per day, but you can fit six people, so for only about P400, you can have an experience of a lifetime!

Wow, I hadn’t realized that I’d written so much on this topic, which was just supposed to be a suggestion on somewhere different to go, but I kind of get excited every time I talk about it. And trust me, my descriptions pale in comparison to the real experience of actually being there! Do yourself a favor and watch Sports Unlimited tomorrow night at 11 p.m. on ABS-CBN. That way you’ll get a taste of how the butanding fever caught all of us! In case you miss it, watch the replay on ANC at 3:30 p.m. Sunday and 7 a.m. the following Saturday. Trust me; this is a trip you have to take your cousins on. They’ll be eternally grateful!

Marc

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