howling at the moon

While a typhoon lashed at the country over Labor Day weekend, a group of six nervous but excited individuals squeezed into unfamiliar neoprene suits and fiddled with strange knobs and hoses.  It was the beginning of a long weekend, and we were taking up scuba diving.  Finally.

Scuba diving was one of those things that were in my “nice to do” things, but I never really gave it much serious thought until recently.  Diving seemed to be too complicated – the equipment too expensive, the wetsuit too tight for my tummy-conscious self, plus I’m not even a good swimmer – but all those stuff got swept away that weekend, and all that was left was the nervous but excited feeling as I strapped on the gear and breathed underwater for the first time.  It felt, needless to say, wonderful.

newly-certified!

It was all that a great weekend ought to be – a new adventure, good food, good company, cold drinks, and, well, yes, videoke.  Add a little competitive spirit during the diving lectures and quizzes,  a boo-boo or two during the practical skills tests, and the magical combination whirls into place.  Memorable moments:

• Abby refusing to perform the mask removal test in one of the open water dives until all of us have done it first, with instructor Ren pointing to his watch as if to say “Ano ba, anong petsa na?” when she tried to negotiate.
• My butt popping back up to the surface when I tried to skin dive. I could hear the all the laughter even when I was underwater.
• Striking all those crazy poses during the five-consecutive-shots-at-a-time group photos.
• Me-Anne trying to go to deeper waters and Ren hauling her back by the fin.
• Boss Romy running out of air in his tank for the first time in, I don’t know, decades.
• Finally succeeding to skin dive – the secret was fixing my eyes on a fish down below and going for it.
• Bobbing around aimlessly during the first Open Water dive, when buoyancy control was practically nonexistent and somebody kept having to inflate or deflate my BCD for me.  Boss Romy said we looked like lost kites fluttering every which way in the air. He also described us as being a “school of fish” – ang laki-laki raw ng dagat, nagsisiksikan kami sa isang lugar.  “Buti sana kung pare-pareho ng tingin e,” he further deadpanned. “E iba-iba ng direksyon.”  Like I said, neutral buoyancy did not come easily.

epekto ng equalization at rhum coke/wine

Diving, so the cliché goes, opens up a new world for you. This is one of the few times when I wouldn’t mind being a cliché.

Bohol, our tour guide Roel claimed, has become the country’s top tourist destination, overtaking Boracay whose popularity has slipped due to pollution and congestion issues. I can’t verify his claim since the Department of Tourism website doesn’t have the info, but if it’s true, it does make sense.  Bohol offers a wide range of activities and points of interest – like Boracay, it also has beautiful beaches, but in addition to that, it also has old churches and watch towers, caves, the famed Loboc river cruise, the flagship species Philippine tarsier, and – what was that – oh – the Chocolate Hills.

Indeed, Bohol has got its tourist sites so down pat that you can hail any taxi driver passing by and he will be able to give you the standard tour.

The problem with that, of course, is that everything’s so standardized that you feel that you’re just following a well-trodden but narrow path, looking straight ahead but remaining oblivious to what goes on at either side.  Worse, you’re trudging along the path with hordes of other people elbowing each other out to get the best photo op.

In Chocolate Hills, for example, it requires a bit of speed and maneuvering to get good photos (and, of course, pose for photos) because of the large number of people milling about the relatively small viewing area (and you’d all end up taking similar-looking photos anyway, because you’re on the same vantage point). Photographers-for-hire and their hawkers/agents are also around offering to take the standard trick photos of people “holding” the hills, forming heart shapes, jumping, “flying” on broomsticks, and what-have-you.  I found the jumping and the flying broomstick photos both amusing and appalling at the same time, because as it turned out, they were trick photos in the real sense – people were just jumping in front of a huge tarp photo of the hills.  This is a fairly recent development, I learned. Apparently the area where people used to jump was fenced off after a kid almost fell down. Of course, all the tarp and printer set-ups ate up even more space in the crowded view deck.  I tried to think of ways to improve the situation, and found myself stumped. Erecting view decks in the other hills will ruin the vista. Imposing a limit on the number of people who can climb up and the time they can spend there may work, but it can be a hassle to visitors especially during peak season. Carefully-placed view decks, I guess, would be the most viable option.

In any case, there are still some ways by which one can try to stray a little off the beaten path in Bohol. Some pointers (I never got to do all these, mind you, these are just nuggets of wisdom borne of hindsight):

• By all means still go and enjoy the standard attractions, but go for the less popular/alternative versions. For Chocolate Hills, go to the view deck in Sagbayan instead of Carmen town. To check out the tarsiers, ignore the riverside operators exhibiting captive ones in small enclosures; instead, check out the Tarsier Sanctuary in the town of Corella for a healthy trek through the woods and a chance to see tarsiers more or less in the wild.  For the Loboc river tour, I think we did check out an alternative option, in another part of the river which features a mini Ati tribe community instead of the waterfalls. Read the rest of this entry »