Another day in paradise.

It’s 2am in the morning when i get up. The last night owls come towards me in the streets of Cebu City. I took a taxi to the bus station, even if it is only 500 meters away. A local friend of mine gave me this advice, because you never know what kind of people are out at that time. Usually i dont care these kind of things too much, but this time i took the advice, as i had seen quite a few strange figures here, indeed.

At 3am the bus left, filled to the last seat. 3 o’clock in the morning, mind you! I spent the whole trip in some kind of twilight state. Since there are no real bus stops, you can stop the bus by hand signals. And so it is a constant stop and go basically. Thats why we needed 3 to 4 hours for the maybe 100 kilometers. Anyways, we reached our destination exactly at sunrise. Oslob. A town in the south of Cebu island, where you can dive with whale sharks.

I’m actually not a “water person” in particular. But the water temperatures here and my previous experiences in Indonesia and the Philippines have changed me in that point somehow. I have already snorkeled in the best coral reefs, i swam with turtles and manta rays. So when i heard about the whale sharks near Cebu island, i didn’t think about doing it for long.

As i said, the sun was just rising on arrival and i sat down on the beach with a cup of coffee and enjoyed the awakening of the day. How the sky is slowly changing and the fishermen are getting their boats ready. On a closer look, i found that they were not fishermen at all, but the guides for the tourist boats for the whale shark watching. And the first tourists were already on the move. But to my surprise the boats stopped about 100 to 200 meters from the beach. I dont know, my imagination was, that we have to go far out to the sea to watch the animals. But no, they come very close to the shore.

But one have to say that they are fed! Unfortunately, that is part of the truth. Otherwise they would not appear there on a daily basis i guess, lol…

Anyways, after a long wait the whole thing started for me too. And even if the actual “excursion” didn’t take much more than 30 minutes, it was a great and lasting experience for me.

As it was still so early when we came back, probably 10am, i decided to do another tour on that day.

Canyoning. Never did it. Never thought about it. So why not?

Only 2 hours later me and a couple of other guys, equipped with helmet and swim vest, stand on the edge of a river waiting to jump in. It’s funny to read my previous article now, cause the jumps we did there were probably much more spectacular than the one i described. Well, i guess that is called progress… or peer pressure 🙂

What followed was no less breathtaking: we jumped, slipped and swam down the river and it was nothing but amazing.

I think for days and adventures like this i am doing this trip. And i am happy and grateful to be able to experience it.

But, and this is also important to understand, on such a long journey not everday is like that. There are days when you are anything but in a paradisiacal place. But thats when you have to keep your spirit high and see paradise in the small things. Maybe thats the real challenge!