A Whale of a Tale

Trip Start May 15, 2006
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Trip End Nov 2007


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Flag of Philippines  ,
Sunday, February 4, 2007

The reason for this mammoth journey? Whale Sharks. From dec to may each year many Whale sharks migrate to Donsol and from the moment we read about it we were going there! You are not allowed to scuba dive (Dean was happy) but you hire a boat and guide and you can snorkel with them. Although its meant to be pretty much guranteed to see one from Feb to may we were still nervous as we headed out to sea (or for Dean when he handed over his cash!) Within 30 mins we'd seen one and we all jumped in the water, the first 2 just swam under us really quickly but the 3rd and 4th were awesome, we swam with them for at least 5 mins and saw the huge mouth. I'm not sure how many we saw but I think at least 4 or 5 and we went into the water over 20 times. It was really amazing to see this huge head swimming out of the gloom and swimming along with these massive fish. It was one of our best days ever and worth every minute of the long journey. A quick rant about my fellow travellers, we shared the price of the boat with a German couple who were a pain in the ass, first we said the boat was going out at 7.30am and they made a huge song and dance about wanting breakfast first and interrogated us about how we would manage without a breakfast (ever heard of bananas?) We had already experienced our landlady's "cooking" at lunchtime and were in no hurry to repeat the experience. They finally turned up to get the boat at 7.20 even tho we'd told them 7am (we had been told the earlier u go, the better). Then when we were out swimming with the sharks Mr German grabbed the dorsal fin of one of them at which point it dived down and ruined the attempt to swim with it for all of us. Dean, never one to mince his word strongly advised him not to do it again (insert your own expletives here!) and so did the guide. I still find it hard to believe that people from the "educated west" behave like this. Luckily he didn't try it again and his stupidity didn't ruin what was a very memorable morning for us.
 
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