Upside down shark hunter

I was picked up by Simon 6.30 at McDonalds in the city center and was immediately introduced to the backseat characters of his toyota pickup truck. There was Moo, Megan, Msee and his own son Matt. Moo or Young as he preferred was from USA, but ethnically from Korea. Megan and Msee were identical twins from Singapore and Matt was Simons 12 year old son. Within a minute I was asked if I wanted to put some music on and I replied "I'm not sure you all will like it cause all I have is house and dance music.." To which Simon replied "Don't worry, that is all I have as well!"  At that point I knew that this was going to a a special day! 

We gunned it out of Cebu City to hard pumping house music, weaving in and out of traffic, blasting the horn as is good customs out here, because people navigate traffic through sound and not visuals... 

It was a 2.5 hour drive down south to the town of Oslob where we received a short safety briefing, which was basically, don't touch the sharks and you will be okay.

Now whale sharks are not dangerous to humans, they filter water for tiny pieces of plankton and krill, but could probably give you one hell of a kiss! The sea was quite rough for snorkeling and there were lots of people and boats in the water but I managed to get some decent pictures and videos with the help of Young. I have always done a lot of snorkeling so I felt very comfortable in the water, doing lots of dives around the sharks, so on many of the pictures I'm actually on the way down, which then immediately earned me the now immortal nickname upside down shark hunter!

This experience will definitely be on the top 5 for the Philippines, being so close to these huge graceful slow moving fish standing almost vertical feeding and then seeing them suddenly switch to horizontal and be gone in a few seconds! 

I think we were all pretty high after this experience, chilling out with mango shakes and looking at pictures, so our expectations for the rest of the day were probably quite low, but Simon suggested we visited a waterfall not far from there, so we thought why not, could be pretty... Little did we know that we were up for another euphoric experience!

So we went on a waterfall chase in the back of Simons truck going up the mountain, reliving a particular scene from the movie Meet the Millers, that were shown at Simons house the night before. 

At this point Young pretty much took over as director of the show, filming left and right with my camera, while rambling about going back to Thailand and use his newly acquired scuba license to find his gopro camera and precious memory stick, that he lost in a cliff diving experiment!

Now coming up to the Tumalog waterfall we had to walk through a bit of jungle so the entire waterfall was a bit obscured until we were almost standing right in it, so it wasn't until I started walking into the pool at the bottom and the clouds suddenly parted that we saw this sight!

We caught our waterfall!

While there we met a group of students, celebrating summer break with a big picnic. When we asked them if they wanted to take a picture with us on the makeshift bamboo raft they were playing with, a big cheer went up and people came running from everywhere, going crazy like a group of wild animals and naturally we fell in :) The lens on my camera unfortunately was a bit foggy so the pictures turned out a bit psychedelic!

 

Next thing we know, they are inviting us for drinks and lunch in the jungle, an invitation I have rarely been known to turn down!

Driving back to Cebu City most were sleeping, but I got a history lesson from Simon in funk soul jazz music, the forefather of disco and house music, which was quite entertaining and very groovy :) 

Arriving back in Cebu City none us seemed willing to accept that this amazing day was going to be over anytime soon so even if Young, Megan and Msee had airplanes to catch in the morning we decided to go out and have a look at the nightlife! Starting at a nice cocktail place called Gilt and later hitting the clubs around infamous Mango Square! 

Gilt cocktail bar playing some Jenga!

     

After an almost 22 hour day, packed with fantastic experiences and lots of new really good friends I collapsed with a smile on my lips knowing that in only 8 hours I would be starting my 3 day scuba diving certificate program.. Life was looking pretty good right there :)

To Young, Megan and Msee, I'm sad we didn't get more time together, you were awesome! But I have a feeling that this quartet has not chased its last waterfall..