Thursday April 7, 2011 7:05 a.m.

Jasmin by the Sea, Camiguin, Philippines

I have Mozart playing on my little speaker, water slowly coming to a boil in the pot, and a motorcycle sitting outside waiting to take me to some new small adventures. Hard to know how things could be any better.

There is one way I would improve on the situation – and that would be not to have two dozen mosquito bites on my back. I put on long pants and a shirt with long sleeves. Then I applied mosquito repellant to my exposed feet, hands, and neck. However, I hadn’t counted on the monsters simply biting me through the material of the shirt. The material of this shirt is very thin. It is one of these super high-tech outdoor shirts that can practically do anything, weighs nothing, and lasts forever.

Anyway, the material on this shirt is super-thin, and I guess it presented no challenge at all to the mosquitos. I didn’t feel them bite me at all. I was only aware of a growing itchiness on my back, which I attributed to sunburn or prickly heat or any number of other causes. It wasn’t until I got back into my bungalow and stood in front of the mirror that I saw the large welts spread everywhere over my back and shoulders. I’m hoping this won’t lead to more trouble than just some bothersome nights. The thing is that I’m horribly sensitive to the bites of insects in the Philippines. Every time I’ve been here, I’ve ended up having to go to a hospital or clinic for treatment. I react badly to the bites and am extremely itchy over a wide area, but then the bites become infected. These infections grow and grow until each bite becomes a round ring with pus coming out of the center. They simply never stop growing and get worse over time no matter what I do. On my cycling trip on Palawan, the infection was so bad on my feet that I had trouble walking. I could barely stand to put pressure on one of my feet. At the clinic, they had to cut away the flesh around the edges of the bites and then clean them and but me on a course of antibiotics. That has been the only way to stop the infection. Most of the time, the infected bites were sand flea bites. Mosquito bites don’t usually get that bad. I have two mosquito bites on my face right now that are both infected, but they don’t seem that bad. Perhaps it is because each time I shave, I accidentally slice them open and remove a layer of flesh.

You have to wonder about the evolutionary path that would bring about such a horror as a mosquito, not to mention all the other biting insects. While walking around Camiguin, I often see water buffalo being tormented by bugs. The only happy water buffalo one sees is the one wallowing in ponds and mudholes. Sometimes, though, they are tied up to a tree and they are an easy target for thousands of insects. Their sides and backs can be black with insects. The poor water buffalo can obviously feel them and is bothered by them, because he will toss his head backwards every few seconds and startle the insects into flying away. The insects, of course, fly up about an inch and then instantly land again. It must be such a torment for the poor animals.

I’m now hoping that there isn’t malaria on this island. I got enough bites last night to make me a possible victim. I almost never get that many bites. I’m quite careful. I sleep under a mosquito net all the time. I apply insect repellant when necessary. I wear long clothing in the evening, and I avoid situations when mosquitos are common. Last night was something of an exception in that I simply wasn’t aware of them biting me. I never saw them, never heard them, and never felt them. Had I felt them, I would have moved to a new place or put on a jacket or done something else. It was also something of a special case in that I sat at the edge of the restaurant with my back to the outside and I sat there practically unmoving for between two and three hours talking.

My conversational partner was a man from Britain who was also staying at Jasmin by the Sea. I had noticed him before, but I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him. I was with Jess and Maya most of the time, and James, this Englishman, was always deep into a book on his Kindle. When he wasn’t reading, he was making conversation with Janet and Mimi and Melinda.

However, I struck up an acquaintance with James in the morning as I was organizing my motorbike rental. With that acquaintance, I was then comfortable enough to approach him last night after my day’s adventures. I was in one of the hammocks reading a book and watching the sunset. James returned and was standing on the balcony of his room also watching the sunset. I put aside my Kindle and went up to him and we ended up talking and then continuing that conversation over dinner.

To say that James is an interesting man would be an understatement. He almost didn’t seem real. He seemed, as so many of the people one meets overseas do, more of a caricature than a real person. He was a caricature of the classically trained and somewhat wealthy and bizarre English lord, except that he was a lawyer, not a lord. No conversational topic could pass without a quote from Dante or Shaw. Americans and Canadians are lucky if they can speak in complete sentences. James spoke in sentences, paragraphs, and chapters all with full and distinct punctuation, titles, and even footnotes. Words normally reserved for writing flowed from his lips effortlessly. I found myself beginning to match his style (short of quoting Dante). My sentences became longer and more complete. My vocabulary became richer and richer. I found myself organizing my thoughts before I spoke and questioning my word choice to ensure they meant exactly what I intended.

I’ve learned from experience that there is no way a simple Canadian can compete with the eloquence of the British. They are born storytellers, and it is an art form I enjoy very much. I don’t mind sitting back and letting the story unfold no matter how long it becomes. In James’s case the storytelling evolved into acting. During one memorable story about his encounter with a thug from a porter’s union in London, he played the part of the thug with the gorilla arms, put his hand threateningly on my back and leaned in close to deliver the lines. It was a good story.

I didn’t learn much about his personal life, but it appeared to be a perfect match for his eccentricity. He was a lawyer, as I said. He had been married once and was close with his sons. His trip to the Philippines was a sudden and unplanned thing. He found a cheap flight and booked it. He invited his sons, but they had grown up on him and had other commitments. “You’ve got to give us more notice, Dad,” they said. His one regret for this trip was giving up his tickets to see Swan Lake. He had seen Swan Lake many times, but the pairing of the leads, he said, was quite special. He had a number of tickets for the opera and the ballet and all of these had to be sold. He implied that the money he got for those tickets equalled the cost of his entire trip to the Philippines.

At times, I had to work hard to figure out his meaning. I realized that he insisted on using words with their original meaning or with some other meaning in addition to its main one. Common usage was not for him. So when he described the effect of the sound of the ocean waves and wind on his dreams he called it “erotic.” He could not sleep for the erotic nature of his dreams. By erotic, he meant vivid and energetic and full of action. I assume that this is a proper usage of the word despite it not being the commonly used one.

Again and again, James found himself in a corner from which he seemed to be putting on airs and denigrating common pleasures and interests. It was a risk of the way he spoke. When you speak of the opera, the ballet, and classical literature, and then say that you have never seen an episode of Seinfeld, it is difficult to keep a tone of condescension out of your voice. Again and again, James had to rush in and assure me that he did not at all feel that Seinfeld and such things were unworthy. He told me that he watched and enjoyed the Simpsons. He had read and enjoyed the Harry Potter books (though he couldn’t help but give a little speech about how the dementors were straight out of Dante). All of this began when he quoted Shaw. I recognized the quote, because it had been used for comic effect in a Seinfeld episode. I remembered it from Seinfeld, but I didn’t realize that it was Shaw. It was a funny scene in Seinfeld. It was based on how an otherwise normal person will suddenly try to look more intelligent than they are and throw in a quote from something. Invariably, they get the quote completely wrong and end up looking somewhat foolish for their effort. That is what George did in Seinfeld. He tried to quote Shaw and got it all wrong. James is no George, and he got the quote right.

The range of people in the world is quite astonishing. The people I’ve met here on this short trip are a case in point. I couldn’t even imagine a scale of personality and character that could accommodate such a wide range as Marcel, Melinda, Jess, Maya, Steven, and now James. Perhaps it is a reflection of the foreigners who end up overseas. I’m not sure if I will see James again. We talked about Palawan, and he was thinking that he might go there. People had told him that Palawan would not suit him, but I argued otherwise. Palawan is a very large island and you can find whatever you want to find there. (James got himself in trouble again here, as he ended up insulting anyone who travels with a Lonely Planet guidebook. He is above such antics of the common herd, of course.) We shall see if he is around.

All of this happened last evening after my day’s adventures. Those adventures involved a return trip to Mantigue Island, a visit to the Enigmata Treehouse and Ecolodge, and a quick stop at the Batiwasan Waterfalls.

 

I had my motorcycle again, and my first stop was to get gas. I had left the tank half full when I returned it, but the tank was empty when I got it back. That is one of the perks for the resort of the system of always renting the motorcycle with an empty tank. You get free gas. The drive down to Mahinog where you catch a boat to the island was pure pleasure. It was like having distilled and pure happiness in a saline bag and having it delivered straight into your veins. I drove and let that feeling course through me. The happiness was so strong that I felt as if I didn’t deserve it. Who could possibly deserve it? It was the beginning of what could be called a perfect day.

Simply driving here exposes you to all kinds of interesting sights and experiences. There is so much going on around you. At one point, a massive dump truck pulled onto the main road from a side road. It was a beast of a machine – a dinosaur – and, as with all vehicles here, it was filled to the top with passengers. Trucks always have a load they are carrying be it lumber, metal, junk, coconuts, or, as in this case, rock and gravel. But then since it is a vehicle going from A to B, it begins to fill with people. You’d think that being poor would make your life simpler. Where do poor people have to go? Aren’t their lives simple and uncomplicated? Judging by the way they travel, that is far from true. People here are on the move all the time. They constantly have to get from point to point. I think it is because of a difference in economies of scale. In Canada, millions and millions of tons of goods are transported around the country every year. But this is all done by truck and train, and we don’t really see it. Imagine taking all of those material goods and having it all delivered by individual people on foot, on bicycle, on donkey, on water buffalo, on motorcycle, on pick-up trucks and old cars. The streets of Canada would be a much different and much busier and much more interesting. They would look like the streets here.

This dump truck paced me for much of my trip down the coast road to Mahinog. Like all large vehicles, it felt it had the right to drive faster than anything else and it blew its horn to clear its path. When it went up a steep incline, the rear gate would open a couple of inches and rocks and gravel and sand would flow out onto the street and fly in all directions. No one cared about this hazard to life and limb. I laughed aloud when I saw it happen the first time. I was behind the truck and suddenly I was dealing with large rocks and gravel all over the road and bouncing around like crazy. I slowed down after that and kept my distance. It was a dangerous affair. I pictured that truck going around the island and leaving behind a deadly crop of obstacles. That’s just what happens here.

I was surprised once again at how organized the trip out to Mantigue Island was. I’m not used to that level of organization overseas. Quite often when something is that organized it becomes less interesting. It would be like going on a group tour as opposed to taking an individual trip. However, it isn’t like that here. There is so much craziness and chaos and so many points of interest around that having the boat trip organized is just fine. It at least takes away the need to bargain with anyone about the cost of the trip. As I was parking my motorcycle out on the street by the beach, a man in an official security guard shirt came out to escort me in and make sure things went okay. He walked me over to the little shack where you buy your boat tickets and then he left me. I had arrived at the same time as two large jeepney loads of Filipinos. They were having a family reunion and were splitting the 550-peso boat fee amongst many people. I felt a bit odd when it was my turn at the shack and I got an entire boat to myself. I felt like I should offer seats on my boat to other people. I was paying for the whole boat myself and sailing off like some kind of emperor. Meanwhile, they were cramming themselves into their boats. In truth, I’m sure whatever feelings they had toward me didn’t include envy or anger. If anything, they would be feeling sorry for me. For them, to be alone is the worst thing you can be. I would have looked a lonely and pathetic person sitting there in that boat all by myself. On my last trip to Palawan, I took a boat out to Coco-Loco Island. I was alone then, too, and the Filipino family in the boat with me was so horrified that they instantly adopted me. I was invited to join them for dinners and activities and everything else. The difference in cultures is apparent there, because nothing would have made me more uncomfortable than being in that large group. I did enjoy them for a meal or two during my time on Coco-Loco Island, but I avoided that obligation as much as possible. The noise and confusion and lack of freedom of the large group was too much for me, and the last thing I wanted to do was spend an evening singing songs with them at the karaoke machine. Traveling alone is probably the least lonely thing I can think of. I meet new and interesting people at a furious rate. Traveling alone is not really traveling alone at all. You are in a sea of people and being by yourself, you naturally meet a large number of them. It’s great fun.

The island was far more beautiful on this second trip than I remembered it from my first trip. Jess, Maya, and I had gotten there a bit late in the day and hadn’t seen all of it. The water was pretty rough as we went out, and my two young boatmen had to work pretty hard to keep the boat angled properly on the waves so that we weren’t swamped. The boat, like all the boats, had a collection of brand new lifejackets, and one of my boatmen handed me one to put on. I don’t think they’d have insisted if I refused, but I didn’t mind putting it on. Sure, if my life depended on it, I could have swum to shore if we capsized, but it wouldn’t have been easy. Distances on the ocean are very deceptive, and swimming in rough water like that is not easy. When I went out with Jess and Maya, we all put on macho airs and refused the lifejackets. I figured that if we did capsize, I could always put on a lifejacket at that time if I felt the need. This time, however, I realized that that wasn’t such a great plan. When my boatman got me my jacket, it took him two minutes to undo the knot that was holding them all together. And when he finally gave me one, I had a terrible time putting it on. Perhaps they are designed this way so that they don’t come off easily. Whatever the reason, it was nearly impossible to put on. I couldn’t bend my arms enough to go through the holes. I had to contort my body in all kinds of crazy directions and eventually lift the jacket way over my head and somehow wriggle the thing down over my two arms and then over my head. It was no easy thing to do, and I doubt I could have done it in the water. If the boat capsized, I probably couldn’t have gotten at the lifejackets anyway. They would be underneath the boat and tied with rope to the mast. And perhaps as the boat flips, one of the outriggers smacks you in the head and knocks you unconscious or at least dizzy for a while. You might be very glad of that lifejacket then just to keep you afloat until you come to your senses. I think the main reason I put on the lifejacket when in most other situations in my life I didn’t bother was the newness of these jackets. They were brand new and state-of-the-art. They were clean and light and made of thin stiff material with three easy straps with buckles for putting them on. Most of the time, the lifejackets on boats are horrible things that have been soaking in seawater and growing fungus for twenty years. They are usually in a big dirty and smelly pile underneath the benches. They are usually old-fashioned things with just big clumps of foam barely held together with fraying straps. They have no shape and are almost impossible to figure out. These lifejackets, despite being difficult to put your arms through the holes, were practically fashion accessories. They were cleaner than my own T-shirt.

My two boatmen didn’t speak any English that I could elicit from them, but we managed to communicate the terms of our trip. The usual deal is that for 550 pesos, you get a boat out to the island, and the boat will wait for you. You can stay there for 4 hours. After that, it will cost 50 pesos per hour. As on my previous trip, I had to pay a 20-peso entrance fee for the island. The 550 pesos is a boat trip and anchorage fee. That does not get you onto the island. I also had to pay 50 pesos to be able to snorkel in the marine sanctuary.

The woman in the shack on the island was the woman who was in the shack on the mainland selling tickets on my first visit. She was 28 years old and was finished with school. She spoke excellent English and we talked about a lot of different things during my stay on the island. My first project was to walk all the way around the island. It is ringed by a perfect white beach the entire way around – a beach of beautiful fine white sand. I had my camera with me and I played around with various “artsy-fartsy” shots, putting driftwood and then coconuts in the foreground. I don’t think I did this as much in the past. Recently, I always look for something, anything, to put in the foreground when I take a picture of a landscape, or as in this case, a beachscape or oceanscape. I played around with filling the viewfinder mainly with sand, then mainly with water, then with sky. A rule of thumb that photographers throw around is the rule of thirds – that if you take a picture of a landscape, one third of the picture should be land and two thirds sky or two thirds land and one third sky. I tend to do that instinctively. Such pictures just look better. However, I also do whatever I feel like and I sometimes put the horizon right in the middle or I put just a tiny sliver of land at the bottom with a vast sky above it. With a digital camera you can take as many pictures as you like and it costs you nothing. I also continued my experiments with exposure compensation. It was difficult to see the images on my LCD screen, but I felt that two stops was too much and one stop was just about right. The thing is that you get so much reflected light off sand and water that the camera’s meter is tricked and becomes inaccurate. So if you are using any kind of automatic setting (I tend to use aperture priority), you then set exposure compensation to override it to let in more or less light. In this case, I underexposed by a full stop, and that seemed to be just right. I also use a polarizing filter, which filters out polarized light, which also distorts color. You get purer and more vibrant colors that way.

I could have walked around the island several times and not run out of new subjects and new perspectives. Photography becomes a great pleasure in such a setting. You simply can’t take a bad picture. I showed them to the woman at the park ticket office later on after we had talked for a while. She was astonished to see what her island looked like through photography. She is there on that island three full days a week and sees it with her eyes, but framing it in a camera’s viewfinder makes it new and dramatic. How often, after all, do you lie down on the sand with a coconut an inch from your eye and stare at the sand and sky from that perspective? You simply don’t. Yet, you do that all the time when you are taking pictures. You frame the image with the fronds of a tree or the roots of a tree. There was a fishing village on the island, and that gave me other subject matter. I didn’t make the plunge and try to take pictures of the people. I felt better leaving them unmolested and concentrating on objects and nature. However, their many boats, fishing nets, and houses gave me some things to put in the foreground. I used my 18-55 kit lens the entire time, and I shot almost all the photos at the widest angle of 18. (That is roughly 27 mm in old film terms.) The pictures look good on my LCD, but it’s possible they will be poorly exposed when I see them on my computer screen. We’ll see. I hemmed and hawed about bringing my Archos player with me. With that unit, I could copy the pictures to it with a card reader and see the pictures on a larger and better screen. I decided to leave it at home, but I wish now I had brought it. That is always the way. Whenever I leave something behind to lighten my load, I generally regret it.

After my trip around the island, I left my knapsack at the ticket office and went snorkeling in the sanctuary. I had high hopes for the snorkeling, but it didn’t really work out. It was high tide, and the coral was quite a distance below me. There were not many fish around and my mask kept fogging up. I don’t generally have trouble with that, but for some reason I did this time. I had to stop many times and remove my mask and try to clear it and then put it back on. It isn’t a huge deal, but it takes effort to do that when you are swimming in deep water. I did one full circuit of the marine sanctuary and that was enough. Perhaps if my mask were clear, I’d have stayed out longer, but there wasn’t much point. Next time, I am going to purchase a spray bottle of anti-fogging solution. I saw some in Taipei before I left, and I almost bought it, but I never needed it before. One generally spits on your mask and your saliva acts as an anti-fogging agent after you wash it away. I don’t know why that would be so, but it is true and commonly done by most if not all divers and snorkelers.

I hung out on a big drift log on the beach for a while just enjoying the sun and the views. I wore a T-shirt the entire time I was snorkeling and walking around. The last thing I wanted to do was burn my back and shoulders as I have done so many, many times in the past. I have a patchwork body at the moment with a tanned face, forearms, and neck with a still-white torso, but I’m not here for a photo shoot. Over time, my torso would catch up with the rest of my body and I would be one nice color. For a 10-day trip, I end up a kaleidoscope. It occurs to me that women must be very conscious of this and be very careful. My friend Treva went to a beach resort for her honeymoon, and afterward she posted a number of photos of herself in her bathing suit. Thinking back, she was not overly tanned or burned or different colors. She was just one color. There is no way I could achieve that given my normal day-to-day life here. I’m always a patchwork of white, brown and red my first weeks overseas.

Speaking of skin, my mosquito bites have gotten worse and worse. I hesitate to even call them mosquito bites. They don’t look at all like a mosquito bite. Each one has spread into the size of about a large coin. They are angry red and are large raised lumps. About six of them have already gotten infected. They are oozing pus out of the middle, a strange kind of pus that crystallizes into hard yellow shards. They are phenomenally itchy and have made it very difficult to sleep or stay still. I went to a pharmacy on my rounds yesterday and I picked up a tube of medicated cream – an anti-inflammatory, antipruritic, and anti-bacterial cream. I’ve had to do this on every trip to the Philippines. These creams help with the itchiness, but they’ve never prevented the spread and growth of the infections. Unless something changes, I see another trip to the hospital in my future. It’s very strange. What is it about my skin and chemical make-up that makes me react in this way? I was told several times that the infection is actually coral from the ocean. I react badly to the bite of mosquitoes and sand fleas and the point at which they bite me stays open and inflamed. Then when I go into the ocean, coral gets into the wound and starts to grow, and that is the infection. Eventually, the coral grows outward in a ring and that is the telltale sign that it is coral. I don’t know what I think of that theory, but nurses and doctors have told me that. Yet, if it is coral, how do antibiotics treat it? Do antibiotics kill coral? What exactly is coral? I learn all about coral on every snorkeling trip I take, but then I promptly forget it all. Ugh. My back is on fire as I write, and I have these mental images of raking my nails over my flesh and tearing it from my bones. It would feel so good… There are three bites in particular that are dead center on my back. I can see them in the mirror when I hold up my shaving mirror to the bathroom mirror. However, contort my body as I might, I can’t reach them with my fingers to apply this cream.

After my snorkeling and my time relaxing on the beach, I went to the ticket office and hung out with the women there and we chatted for a while. It’s a sign of the modern times that this woman wrote her name down for me – Jennifer Tenestrante – so that I could “friend” her on Facebook and send her the pictures of her island. She wants to put them on her Facebook page.

Jennifer then told me about a trail going through the center of the island. I set off on that trail a few minutes later. The island is small, so the trail wasn’t long, but it seemed to take you back in time. I didn’t expect that the island could support that kind of forest. It was practically primeval. Massive trees of all kinds soared above me with root structures and vines creating a riot of vegetation. Many of the trees were labelled, but I didn’t recognize any of the names. I was surprised that the villagers had not, over time, cut down the trees. The existence of this forest made the island even more of a treasure than I had thought. I didn’t take any pictures, though. There is simply no way to capture what forests look like when you are inside them unless you really know what you are doing. All my attempts of photographing trees results in very little. One sees a tree trunk and some branches and little more. It never conveys what the place truly looks like.

I spent about four hours on the island and then I returned to boat 15 for the return to the main island of Camiguin. My two boatmen were waiting casually for me on the boat and we set off. It was a wonderful trip back and it gave me time to reflect on the privilege I had of going to that island. I don’t know if it is the thing to do here, but it felt right to tip the boatmen. I only had largish notes, and there were two of them, so I gave the captain the tip, and he instantly ran off to a shop nearby to get small change and divide it up with his crewman.

My motorbike was patiently waiting for me, and I zoomed up the road with my silly helmet on my head. Most people don’t wear helmets here, but as I am renting from Jasmin by the Sea, I must. The fine for not wearing one is quite large, and as a foreigner, I would be stopped if the police saw me. And Jasmin people might also get in trouble. So I put on the goofy helmet. It’s actually a construction helmet of some kind.

I stopped at the Treehouse and Ecolodge, but there was no one there. It was a huge and rambling structure built on and around a massive acacia tree. Looking through the screens I saw everything that any self-respecting hippie and artist could want. There were many floors and many nooks and crannies and wild stairs and passageways going in all directions. It was a very large complex, but without a single person there. I couldn’t go inside, and so I just walked around the outside and the gardens taking in the atmosphere. I thought that it might be an interesting place to stay, but even if it were full and active, I could see that it would not be comfortable. It was quite open to the world at large. It was damp and smelly and probably full of mosquitoes. It didn’t have rooms per se, but just floor space with tons of colorful pillows. Staying there would mean sleeping on the floor in big communal areas. It could be interesting, but not my first choice.

I spoke with James that night and regaled him with stories of the beauty of Mantigue Island. My enthusiasm impressed him enough that he resolved to go there himself the next day.

 

The next morning, I got on my motorbike once more with my goal being a marine sanctuary for giant clams. Before I got there, however, I went on a detour up a road into the interior of Camiguin. There was a volcano monitoring station there. I wasn’t in the mood to stop there, and I kept going. The road climbed higher and higher until I was at the very base of the top of Hibok-Hibok. It was a glorious ride. I stopped often to take pictures of the volcano’s slopes and of the ocean far below. People lived along the road and I was greeted with the usual chorus of hellos. I chatted at one point with a group of volunteers who were in the mountains with a doctor and a nurse with a program to inoculate the children against measles. This type of civic pride is quite common here.

The road was in very good condition right up to the point where it simply stopped. There was a large gash in the earth there as well as a collection of heavy equipment. I’m sure there was a story behind this. The heavy equipment looked to have been there for years and years and years. They were rusting hulks, almost like the remnants of a war from long ago. One had massive steel treads, and these treads had broken and were trailing out behind the machine. I picked up the end of the tread, marveling at its weight. There were tons upon tons upon tons of steel here and it was likely to stay there until the end of time.

I came down out of the mountains and then turned south and east toward the giant clams. I’d heard about this place from Jess and Maya. They had spotted a sign for a fish sanctuary on their trip around the island, and they had turned down the road just to see what was there. They found this place that worked to conserve giant clams, and they told me about it. They said it was an interesting place and that snorkeling was good and the clams very large. Let me say that they undersold the experience a good deal. I’m surprised now at how casual they were in their descriptions. When I told James about it later on, I raved. I simply raved.

For one thing, the road to get there was several kilometers long and it led through the most beautiful area you could imagine. It was a rough and rocky trail more than a road and on all sides was thick jungle, quaint villages, and teasing views of blue ocean water. The road ended at a beach of indescribable beauty – white sand, blue water, palm trees, a riot of vegetation. I parked my motorbike in an area shaded by large trees and found two young children at a small table with a thatch roof overhead. They volunteered at the marine sanctuary and carefully filled out my official receipt when I gave them my 25-peso entrance fee. This fee allowed me to enter the sanctuary and see the displays. It even got me a guided tour. For another 150-pesos I would be taken out snorkeling by another guide to see the giant clams in their natural state.

I can’t overstate the wonder of this place, particularly when finding it so casually and easily. My experience of the world is generally quite different. How often are we told that this movie is the greatest thing on earth? We are bombarded with media and advertising telling us and convincing us of how amazing something is. Yet, whatever it is, it never lives up to the hype. Everything about Camiguin, and this giant clams marine sanctuary in particular is the exact opposite. There is simply no advertising at all. Nowhere is there a sign to be found talking about the giant clams of Camiguin. Not even on the main road. The only sign I saw there was a plain government sign for the Cantaan Centennial Multi-Purpose Coop. This was written on the receipt the children gave me, so I had to assume the marine sanctuary and the Multi-Purpose Coop were one and the same. It simply isn’t possible to be more understated than that.

The grounds of this place consisted of sandy paths and thatch huts and buildings all lined and adorned with string laden with tiny shells. There was driftwood everywhere decorated with seashells of every size and color – Christtmas trees of the sea. It was all very amateurishly and energetically done and produced a wonderful effect. People – volunteers, I understood – were dotted about raking the sand, weeding gardens, and caring for the numberless plants.

I was quickly claimed by two young girls – both pretty, well-spoken, confident, and bursting with knowledge about giant clams. They took me to some large concrete tanks where they had six of the seven species found in the Philippines, the largest an easy two feet across. They counted them out and pointed them out by name to me. They told me about their biology and their complex life cycles. The giant clams sat mysteriously in the water pulsing and reacting to our every move above them. They pulled in water at one end and jetted it out the other, straining plankton from the seawater. Their mantle was wide open, packed with algae that provided the clams with energy through photosynthesis. All this, the girls told me with words like anus, sperm cell, predator, and photosynthesis falling easily and perfectly from their lips. I was astonished and charmed.

From there, I made my way into the main building where there were more educational displays about giant clams. I paid my 150-peso fee, and a teenage boy was assigned to me as my guide. Together, we walked down a long beach. The idea was to swim out at the far end of the beach and then drift back with the current. If we started at this end, we would be fighting the current the entire time.

The boy had his own mask, snorkel, and flippers. I was worried that with his flippers he would swim very fast and be frustrated at my slowness. However, he was the perfect guide and he led me out into the ocean at an easy pace as I breast stroked behind him.

Almost before I knew what was happening, I was swimming above a field of giant clams. It was astonishing. The marine sanctuary, in their effort to conserve the giant clam went out into the ocean, found them and brought them here to live in peace. In this area, the clams were lined up like rows of wheat in a field, stretching off as far as the eye can see. They were much larger than the ones in the tank, the largest perhaps five feet in length. These were no grey creatures of the deep. They lived in shallow water where they could absorb as much sunlight as possible, and they simply burst with color. Their mantles were a rainbow of primary reds, blues, yellows, and greens. They pulsed and fed contentedly below me. When my feet moved too fast and startled them, they all suddenly constricted their mantles with a sudden jerk. The girls had told me that other than humans, their main predators were other creatures that lived in shells. They showed me one no bigger than their finger and said that even this small one could kill a giant clam. It moved across the ocean floor searching for a giant clam. Then it would slowly climb up the outside of the shell and attach itself to the soft mantle. It injected a venom which killed the clam slowly and ate it alive. It was a horror story, and I looked at each giant clam with some pity. They could do nothing but simply sit there and hope that such a fate didn’t await it, that the deadly shell would pass it by and not sense it there. I assume the giant clams can close up completely and protect themselves that way, but no matter how startled they were, none of them every did. They jerked their mantles in, and the two halves of their shell home moved together, but they never closed all the way. The two girls said that if I put my hand in there, the giant clam would bite it off, but I think they were joking.

There seemed to be no end to the giant clams as we swam from site to site. Some were in large fields like the first group I saw. Others sat in proud isolation in the coral or in small groups of two or three. The coral was the icing on the cake. In fact, the coral itself was spectacular enough to be an attraction all by itself. Even without the giant clams, this place could bill itself as a prime snorkeling area. The coral was of a bewildering variety and, safe in the sanctuary, it had grown to immense size. I saw green table coral that had grown to thirty feet across. I don’t know the names of all the different types of coral, but I’m sure they were all represented there, and I simply floated above them taking it all in as I drifted past in the tide. I wonder which coral is now growing in all my mosquito bites.

I had many other adventures throughout the day and on my way back from the marine sanctuary – too many to recount here. It would take all day. I got back to Jasmin by the Sea in time to enjoy a cold bottle of beer in the hammock while watching the sunset. James came back around that time. We had dinner together and I was pleased that his trip to Mantigue Island had gone well. I can get very enthusiastic about things, and I worried that the island would strike him as not as special as I had said. However, he loved it there and said that I had called it exactly right. It was great fun to listen to his stories of his day as I told him mine.

Tags: Camiguin Trip, fee, fly, Mantigue Island