Kayla, Alene's sister arrived today to travel the Philippines with us for 10 days. That day we flew to Legazpi in the south of the island. Once in Legazpi we had to take a tricycle (tuk-tuk with a roof) to the mini bus station and then we took a mini bus to Donsol and then another tricycle to our resort on the beach. The first thing we did was to register at the Whale Shark Visitors Center to take a boat out to try and see the sharks. After that we admired our amazing resort, which was only costing us $15 a night per person with our own bathroom. Our room over looked the infinity pool which overlooked the beach and the beautiful sunsets. The hotel sat right on the water and from the restaurant you could look out over the water.
From the window in our room.
Black sand.
Had the beach to ourselves.
The next morning we were on a boat bright and early for our first try at spotting a Whale Shark. We learned a few rules about swimming with the sharks. Its one boat per shark, 6 swimmers per shark, and you have to be 4 meters away from the huge creature. Easy enough, now we just need to find one. There were 6 tourists, the captain, and 3 scouts on our boat. To find a shark the boats zigzag around the bay looking for big shadows in the water. So that's what we did for 4 hours. We sat on the boat and waited for a scout to locate a shark. It was a long and disappointing 4 hours. No whale sharks. When we got back to shore I opted to go on the afternoon boat as well. Still no whale sharks.
All 3 of us signed up for a 11am boat the next morning. So we boarded the boat with lunch and drinks thinking we would be able to sit on the boat and eat while we watched for the sharks. That was not the case. As soon as we got in the boat the captain told us to hold on because there had been a sighting and we were gonna hurry over. Sure enough, there was a whale shark swimming around filtering the water for krill and plankton. YESSSSSSSS! The fish was huge! Now that there was a sighting all the boats congregated in the area to catch a glimpse (the law limits 30 boats in the water for whale shark safaris). The boats would follow the shark leap frogging each other to drop off its passengers in the sharks path. As soon as the 6 passengers and the guide were in the water the boat would pull away and another would pull in and drop off its 6 passengers. Our first jump, we are all looking around waiting for the shark to come by, then our guide yells "look down, look down". We look down and all of a sudden a huge mass appears not 10 feet away from us and it slowly swims by. Incredible. Unexplainable. It was beautiful with its slow moving actions and white spots. Like we weren't even there. The whole group yelled with excitement when the shark was no longer in sight. We got to jump in and watch the shark swim by 6 more times in a 2 hour span. Sometimes it would swim beside us, sometimes right below us. More than once I thought its fin might hit me. We were so close. It was so amazing seeing this huge creature. After the 2 hours we were tired and very happy! We went back to our hotel and finally got to each out lunch we thought we were gonna eat long ago.
Such a great day!
Pretty excited...
And celebrating... (haha, look at me ears in that mask)
Because we just saw....
The next day we headed back towards the airport in Legazpi. We had to take a tricycle to the bus stop, take a Jeepney (what looks like a homemade passenger vehicle), to one city, hop on another Jeepney to Legazpi, then another tricycle to the airport. But we made it.
Tricycle
Jeepney
We spent the afternoon in Manila then took another flight to Puerto Princesa on the island of Palawan.
What I have learned:
Whale sharks can get up to 12 meters long. That's like 40 feet!
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