Apo Island,
Philippines
Thursday, February 1, 2007
There r only 2 places to stay on Apo Island, one is well out of our price range and when we phoned the other (Liberty's) they only had a "deluxe room" avaliable. We decided it was time for a splurge and set off for Apo the next morning, we booked a boat pickup with the hotel because they charge per person, not per boat and we didn't know if we would be able to get a group together at the pier for a boat. We've met some really great people recently and I was beggining to think I'd been a bit harsh on my fellow travellers but that morning I was to be reminded of how stupid people can be! We got to the pier and there were a French couple there and their friends who I think were English (We'll call them Mr and Mrs Annoying, spade a spade and all that). We told them we'd booked a boat from the resort and that they were more than welcome to share it if there was room, they said they'd try to call the night before but had no signal on their mobile. Anyway, the boat turned up but the man could only take 4 people, Mrs annoying made such a fuss and went on and on, i honestly think she expected Dean and I to let her and her friends to take the boat that we'd booked(She was what Dean would describe as "Code Red:High Maintainance")! The thing is they could pay for a boat to take them over and cos there were 4 of them it would have cost them about 20p more each! Finally we got on the boat and left, the boatman had dean and I and 4 Filipinos, at this point Mr annoying had a massive wettie about "being lied to" because the boatman said he could only take 4 passengers and he tried to be a hero in front of his friends and have it out with the boatman. Dean and I were so embarrased to be English at this point, Dean suggested that if he doesn't like being lied to, maybe he should never come to SE Asia or vote in a General Election ever again. These weren't young backpackers either (probably the fashionably named "career gappers"), they all had a good 10 years on even Dean and i was thinking, "i've managed to call and book a boat with no mobile and here u lot are with all the gadgets and 300 years between you and u can't organise a boat in an archipelago of 7 107 islands(there's more than 1 or 2 knocking around)" (or as my Mum would say, u don't know your arse from your elbow!)
We left the others behind (hooray) and sailed off to Apo Island, a tiny island just off the coast which is known for its rich marine life and has a marine sanctuary in the surrounding waters. Our deluxe room was well worth the extra $6, it was one of the nicest rooms we've ever stayed in. We spent the next 4 days kicking back, eating banana pancakes amd diving/snorkelling on the first night we all had a BBQ on the beach so we really got to know everyone. The reefs there are the best I've seen, prolific, healthy coral and lots of life, on my first dive I saw a huge turtle and I've never seen so many Nemos (I really love them). There was really good snorkelling just a 5 min walk from where we stayed, as one of the only non divers Dean decided to set up "Snorkellers Corner" in the restaurant to get away from the techno dive talk! As for me for some reason I ended up in a group of experieced divers which left me feeling a bit like the weakest link most of the time. Especially the first 2 dives when I had a super thick wetsuit which was really buoyant and when I tried to descend with my normal amount of weights I just stayed on the surface like the incredible floating woman! I learnt a lot tho, the other guys were really helpful and i think my technique has improved more than it ever did when I was learning to dive. The funny thing was they were all really competitive about air consumption and I always came up with the most so that made me feel better at the end of every dive! it was amazing diving there, especially the drift dives - flying without wings.
