On the Way

If I don't move quickly enough, I'm going to fall too far behind in my updates, so unfortunately I'll need to be a little brief about some things from Boracay by talking about only a few things in detail and otherwise listing out others. I met Armand in the terminal, we shared some ideas about music, flew 45 minutes to Kalibo, hired a tricycle for 5 minutes to a bus station, took a bus for 2 hours to Caticlan, rode a ferry for 15 minutes to a pier in Boracay, then got a van to take us the last 15 minutes to the resort.

I had been told different things about Boracay: it's littered with tourists, the beaches are pristine, the people there are snobby, I'll fall in love with it right away, it doesn't have good diving, the diving is great, I'll hate it, the beach is groomed twice a day, it is very international, etc. etc. Ultimately I wasn't completely sure what to expect. After dropping our stuff in the room, it didn't take Armand much encouragement to convince me to go swimming. After all, it was piping hot and I just spent the day cooped up in transit. My first steps onto White Beach were steps that will not easily escape my memory. The soft sand was so white and so much like powder that it was as if they mix it with flour. The shallow slope of the ocean floor allowed us to walk out a good hundred feet into the clear warm water before we had to swim. An hour must have passed when one of Armand's friends named Marin came along. Marin is a gorgeous Filipina raised in Orange county and she not only has an awesome heart and great personality to go along with her, but a perfectly-matched American boyfriend named Brett sharing all the same qualities, surprisingly from Dayton. I got to know them pretty well over the course of my week there and wish I'd known them since childhood.

Bom Bom Bar was great (though somehow pronounced “boom boom,” which was a bit awkward at first since “boom boom” in Sabang means sex). It turned out to be a very hip outdoor bar/restaurant spread over the sand centered around great live music. Armand did a guest appearance on the relatively open microphone with his very engaging and refreshingly quirky friend deemed the Reggaeman.

I managed to get in touch with Dustin, a friend of both Armand and Ethei (my favorite instructor back in Sabang) working at Blue Mango and ended up having quite a memorable experience. Right after meeting him, I was lingering around the shop and before leaving, he takes me aside and shows me an engagement ring. Seeing my surprise and bewilderment, he explains that someone is going to propose to his girlfriend on the dive. I jealously comment one how cool it would be and how I've never seen it before. After a moment's hesitation, he asks me to join him on the dive to help keep track of the rest of the divers. I threw on a set of rental gear and jumped on the boat where among several others were an anxious man and his unsuspecting girlfriend. We all dropped down and the instructor handed us bread with which to feed the fish. We all held out our offerings and watched in wonder as the swarm of greedy fish came to take as much as they could find from our fingers, sometimes nibbling our fingers by accident with their small and harmless mouths. Finally, the man pulls out a laminated paper:
Meeting you was by chance, becoming your friend was by choice, and falling in love with you was destiny. Will you marry me?”
The water that immediately began filling her mask was an indication of her smile behind her regulator which broke the seal of the mask allowing water to enter. The rest of the dive was uneventful in comparison, but later dives were nice. There is a site called Yapak (meaning “barefoot” in Tagalog) that is a gorgeous wall starting around 25 meters which was so nice I dived it twice. Most notably was the second time when we took a second tank on the boat so we did “Yapak 2” for the first dive then “Yapak 1” for the second with a one hour surface interval in between. We saw great fish in the huge crevasses and trenches on the first dive followed by a great hour sitting on the boat above crystal clear shallow water by the nearby Puka Beach. Unfortunately our trusty instructor/divemaster Dustin decided to go with a standard hour surface interval without considering the dive profiles. All of us should have known better. My computer started to worry after 5 minutes when we swam through a breathtaking arch at 42 meters teeming with life. The rest of the dive, I tried to make my computer happier by staying about 3-5 meters shallower than the other 3, signaling that I was okay but my dive computer was not happy. By the time we made our ascent, my computer said that we had 21 minutes of required decompression before exiting the water. Luckily I conserve my air and was able to provide air to my buddy Ginger during the last 3 minutes of the dive. After surfacing, Dustin's “I was going to have us stop for 10 minutes, but more decompression never hurts,” was not much of a comfort.

This picture is of me, Marin, and Brett. Other highlights of the trip include watching the beautiful sunset on a traditional sailboat as we cruised along sitting on plastic mesh holding the outrigger together as the warm waves slowly soaked our clothes. To find my favorite snack, I went to a little shop called Fruitas where one could not only find fresh fruit smoothies peeled, cut, and blended upon ordering, but also coconuts filled with fresh fruit. I would regularly get a mango banana coconut for hardly more than a dollar. They took a fresh coconut, cut the top off, shaved the meat (leaving the shavings inside), filled it with crushed ice, cut fresh mangos and bananas, mixed them all together, and filled the remaining space with coconut milk. These things were to die for and if I wasn't careful I would eat them for breakfast lunch and dinner every day. Another of my favorite things about Boracay was the scenery. I hope you enjoy the pictures that I think speak for themselves.

Keeping It Fresh

While life carried on as usual back home, here's what was going on with me yesterday:

As always, I woke up to my phone jingling just behind my head and turned on The Simpsons. A brief inventory assessment determined that the breakfast menu was either toast or french toast and I quickly opted for the latter. The layout of my room is such that when I'm in the kitchen, the tv is around the corner at such an angle that I end up cooking while imitating one of those tippy bird toys and miss most of what's going on.

Every weekday is Simpsons at 7 followed by Friends at 7:30. I've never really watched either show but since they're on, I've gotten into them a bit. I'm no raving fan of either one, but it's a nice way to start my mornings. I'd been following the episodes of Friends for a couple weeks to the point that one of the characters was about to move to France. About a week ago when 7:30 rolled around, all the characters were younger and I realized that I was watching an episode from one of the first seasons. Apparently the station decided I needed to get caught up on everything leading up to that point before I get to find out what happens.

After washing my dishes and delegating the air to dry them, I threw on my bag and headed off to work. We have two customers right now who are more interested in the local girls than they are in diving. In other words, work is awful. Right when I thought that it was going to be a long painfully boring day, Mark decides to treat us by taking us out to a 48m deep cave on double tanks. (Recreational dive limit is 40m). My eyes lit up like it was Christmas and I quickly began assembling my gear. An unusually bumpy 10 minute boat ride took us right to the entry point at which point we rolled backwards off the boat and started finning down as soon as we broke the surface. 20m. 25m. 30m. Darker and darker. 35m. I could feel the pressure compressing my wetsuit. 40m. Still descending.

By the time I reached 45 meters I could feel the nitrogen narcosis scrambling my brain. For those of you who don't know, nitrogen narcosis is a side effect of going deep and has to do with the increased amount of nitrogen in your body. People often relate it to being drunk. The only other time I really felt it was when I went to a deep wreck near Seal Island in South Africa and had trouble figuring out which way was up (great story if you're ever interested). The way it happened this time was slightly different. You know how you can have a couple thoughts simultaneously? Imagine trying to think 5 unrelated thoughts all at the same time. I'm not talking about multitasking or juggling 5 thoughts at once. I'm talking about having those thoughts competing for attention. It was like 5 people trying to talk to me at the same exact time, all of them equally determined to have my attention. I was unable to focus on any one thing at a time while finning around at 45 meters beneath the surface, fighting current, and trying to stay as close to the group as I could.

I look at my computer: nearly 49 meters. My head was swimming. We finally found the cave, zipped through the very short passage one at a time, and started our ascent. When I checked my computer, it showed 51.4m as the maximum depth: nearly 170ft.

Later, I got news that all of the instructor candidates (including Chris who works here) passed their course and exams. I was going to hang out with them for a bit but Tomi had made the suggestion earlier that we make a special dinner. We went to the market in a total downpour and bought supplies including shrimp, fish, and rice. Back at his place, we cut the simple ingredients, cleaned the shrimp, and thinly sliced the fish with my Letherman. We pressed the rice out on square pieces of seaweed and proceeded to roll our own sushi. I've never actually done it before so it was especially exciting. The fresh fish melted in my mouth, and the improvised soy sauce with chilies instead of wasabi ended up working quite well.

Following the sushi feast, we braved the rain all the way to the bar where we usually meet so we could congratulate the new instructors. We congratulated the three who were there but couldn't find Chris. However, since there was a pool tournament starting there at 9:30, Tomi and I decided to split and ended up going to play pool on our own for an hour before my bed was calling me so much that I couldn't ignore it and was forced to retire.