Excerpts From Our Life in Dumaguete

While we are working for Brian we are staying at his apartment in Dumaguete and getting to know the city a bit.  We went to the mall the other day because we heard you could get yogurt at the supermarket there and that it was air-conditiond (the mall, not the yogurt.) Yes, I know how I usually always complain about air conditioning (Giovannina writing) but it is so hot here your brain literally does not work unless you stand under a cold shower or find some other way to cool your core. On days that we are working this is not an issue because we are out of the city and underwater for over 5 hours of the day, but days in the city require some cooling off.  So off to the mall we went where the air was mercifully cool and  we did find yogurt!

Yay for Lactobacillus! The food here has been great but it does wreak havoc on the tummy some times. We have found that it has helped quite a bit while traveling to have a daily bit of yogurt to keep us "healthy."  O.K. maybe to much information but we just listened to a podcast about probiotics (live bacterial cultures like in yogurt or kiefer) and how they are finding that people who eat more yogurt and such are happier and have less anxiety and stress hormones in there system.  It is true - check out the Radiolab podcast on guts.

The other night we went out for beers and Woody got a chance to try balut - aka "eggs with legs" - for the first time. Balut is basically a hard-boiled, fertilized duck egg, including the embryo. When you order it, you can choose how many days of development it has had. This balut was 17 days old. Here is his description of what it was like:
 Kind of like drinking chicken soup out of an egg. First you crack open the top and slurp the broth. Then you dig out the yolk, which is firmer than a chicken egg yolk and tastes more like a dumpling. The embryo is "silky" and a little bit crunchy in parts - must be the beak or some bone just forming. The "white" of the egg is a hard, cartilaginous mass that doesn't taste very good, so I skipped it. I'm glad I ate it at night - I couldn't really tell what it looked like, but it tasted good.

Sunday, April 22, we will head to Siaton for three days of reef surveys with Brian and Oliver. This will take us out of town for a bit and let us see another part of the Negros Oriental coast and give us a room of our own for a couple of nights :)

Reasearch in Dumaguete

We originally decided to include the Philippines in our trip in order to volunteer with Brian Stockwell, a graduate student working on a PhD in Marine Biology at Old Dominion University but doing his research through Silliman University here in Dumaguete, Philippines. We were supposed to be working with Brian the entire month of April, but his schedule got changed and we had more time to explore the Philippines,  thus our excursions to Baguio, Sagada and Moalboal.

Getting to Dumaguete on April 10th involved a hot two hour bus ride and a half hour ferry ride from Moalboal. Dumaguete is a coastal university town on the island of Negros. The SCUBA community is well established here, boasting of the famous Dauin muck diving and of Apo Island, one of the oldest marine sanctuaries in the Philippines.

Brian is studying connectivity between Marine Protected Areas  (MPAs) and non protected areas around Southern Negros, Apo, Bohol and Southern Leyete regions.  After meeting up with him to discuss the details of his work over a few beers, we decided to start on the 12th.

Our duties  with Brian are very similar to those while we were helping on the GBR:  we roll out the transect lines  (this time there are three 50m transects) then wait for Brian and his co-worker, Oliver, to record all of the data they need before rolling the tapes back up.A typical dive lasts 60 - 80 minutes, with Brian counting large fish as we lay the transects and Oliver follows behind identifying corals every 0.5 meters. At the end of the third transect, Brian surveys the area for other fish while the person laying the tape - whichever one of us that might be - gets to hang out and enjoy the reef. When Oliver finishes the lats transect, Brian swims back counting the small fish, and we roll the tapes back up.

We do two dives in the morning, then go in for lunch and then do two dives in the afternoon.  Brian actually only needs one of us to do the transect work so Woody and I alternate laying tape.  The one who is not working either goes on the dive to take pictures and enjoys a "fun dive" or stays on the beach reading a book, drawing or getting to know the locals.

We do a mix of shore dives and boat dives depending on where the MPAs or the fishing areas are that Brian wants to compare (most are within an hour or two of Dumaguete).  So far, there has been a lot of damage to the reefs from a typhoon that hit in December. Because of overfishing, many of the reefs we look at are void of large fish all together, and several are littered with garbage. Many of the MPAs we have surveyed have new fish traps and lots of fishing line in them - indicating that they are not being adequately protected but then we also find fishing areas that seem better stocked than the nearby MPA. It is hard to predict what we will find, even Brian who has been diving these reefs for five years now is surprised at the changes (good and bad) that he is seeing.

Brian's research is very important ground work of the MPAs and the local Costal Resource Managers (CRMs) are very appreciative. They are passionate about marine conservation - one even dragged up an armload of garbage while diving with us - but they are severely understaffed and under-funded. As one CRM told us, "We love the reefs so much, but there is only so much we can do." In addition to years of dynamite fishing (some of which is still occurring,  illegally),  seeing garbage along the roadsides, in the streams and finally on the reefs, you realize that saving the marine environment here is a bigger issue than just protecting the reefs. Many of the MPA's we have been surveying are fairly new (only 5 - 10 years old) and it will take many more years for the corals and fish populations to come back and much more regulation, education and enforcement to deal with the issue of all of that garbage.

Having said all of that, the diving is still wonderful and we have seen many amazing critters and wildlife. ribbon eels, manta shrimp, large tritons, sea snakes, giant cuttle fish, tutles, garden eels, and more feather duster worms than you could count in a lifetime..


On our days off, we've been exploring Dumaguete - its market, Silliman University and the myriad of restaurants - as well as the surrounding countryside. We took a lovely trip, just 6 km from the city, to the small town of Valencia where we hired a tricycle to Casa Roro a 200 foot waterfall with several swimming holes in the creek below - a wonderful respite from the heat of the Philippine summer.

After we're done working with Brian on April 24th, we plan to visit one of the local islands to do some recreational diving, snorkeling and sunset gazing before we head off to our next destination - Thailand.

To see more of our photos from Dumaguete, check out our Web Album

Moalboal

We'll skip the 13 hours of bus travel from Sagada back to Manila (though we did get to watch The Rock with Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery, which made at least 90 minutes of the day at least somewhat amusing) and the night sweating in our bed in Manila, and resume our Blog at Moalboal.

Moalboal - it's as hard to say as it looks - is a small town on the Island of Cebu in the Visayas. We didn't actually stay in Moalboal proper, but at Panagsama Beach, a bumpy 15 minute tricycle ride from the bus stop. Panagsama beach is a SCUBA diving magnet. This quarter mile stretch of coastline is home to twenty-three different SCUBA operators. With all those visitors, many other businesses have sprung up as well: restaurants, spas, adventure outfitters. It's a great vacation destination and we were looking forward to enjoying a few days in the water before we started our second volunteer gig in Dumaguete.

We found a room to rent for 4 nights (only $12.50/night with its own bathroom!), and set out to explore the town. One of our reasons for choosing Moalboal was the possibility of seeing whale sharks in the wild. Many outfitters advertised whale shark tours to the village of Oslob, but we learned we could just take a bus there ourselves and save some money. So, that Saturday (April 7) we set out to hopefully see some whale sharks. After a couple hours and a few bus transfers we arrived at Oslob and found the small coastal village was over-run with vacationers. This was Holy Week, and the Saturday before Easter at that, and so the throngs of whale shark watching enthusiasts had descended upon Oslob.


The scene was surreal. Fifteen outrigger canoes bobbed in the waves about 100 yards offshore, each one contained a couple dozen tourists wearing bright orange life vests, clinging to cameras and squealing loudly. Giovannina and I decided to snorkel from shore, which saved us the boat fee and only cost us the $10 entry fee. In the water, it was mayhem. Not only were there about 300 people above the water, but there were dozens of SCUBA divers below the water. We had to be very careful not to get hit by a canoe. It was like Frogger in the water.

But, we did see a whale shark. Three of them, actually, and up close. We snorkeled along side these gorgeous, graceful creatures, each 15 to 20 feet long and spotted like a Tahitian tattoo. Amazing. And we got to share the experience with about 300 other people, mostly screaming from canoes, slamming into each other (and sometimes us), all trying to follow the "feeding boat" that dumped fish meal over the side as the whale shark followed obediently behind like a dog after a treat.

This was not the magnificent wildlife encounter we were hoping for and we very soon got out of the water - upset at what we were seeing and that we had not done more research before coming all this way. Someone's making a lot of money from this and there seemed to be no regulations in place for the safety/health of the animals or even the people. At about $25/person, the tour company probably made $125,000 that weekend - not bad in a country with an annual per capita income of less than $5,000 USD. The best part of the day was meeting a couple from Manila about our age. They were very kind and we ended up having lunch with them before heading back to Moalboal.

Sunday, April 8 we went diving with Nelson's Underwater Safari, the only locally owned outfitter in Moalboal (Nelson is actually the Vice Mayor of Moalboal.) We did four dives: two in the morning, one in the afternoon and one night dive. The diving was superb. Great visibility. Tons of fish, including three frogfish on one dive. And the diver master let us stay down as long as we wanted.


We met a great guy from Australia, Andrew, who became our buddy for the remainder of our time in Moalboal and who loves underwater photography, particularly the small, funny-looking stuff. As two biology geeks, we took to Andrew right away, and even met up with him for dinner in Dumaguete once we arrived there.

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so we'll spare more of them here and direct the reader to check out our photos - mostly taken by Giovannina (she's really getting good at underwater photography) - from Moalboal in our web album.

Sagada

Sagada - Beautiful town in the mountains - now this was our style. We decided to stay for while and booked a room at Davey's Guesthouse for four nights.

The Lonely Planet guide describes Sagada as "backpackers paradise", and it's easy to see why. Sagada is a compact little community, mostly stretching along a single road edging the rim of a limestone canyon. Restaurants, cafes, shops, guide services and guesthouses- all owned and run by local residents (that's a law in Sagada) - line the street and offer endless options for entertainment, adventure or just relaxation. The prices are cheap by international standards - you can easily get by on $20 USD/day - and the vibe is mellow. The town has an official 9 pm curfew, which doesn't mean you have to be in your room at 9pm, but it does mean that they pretty much roll up the sidewalks then and if you're out and about, people will wonder what you're doing.


And the weather is blissfully temperate. After the sweltering heat and humidity of Manila and Baguio, the foggy drizzle in Sagada was a godsend. It reminded us a lot of Seattle - typically it rained in the evening and then would get up to a very pleasant 70 degrees or so during the day. We actually wore our fleeces several times and congratulated ourselves for not shipping them back to Seattle along with our camping gear.



The area around Sagada is spectacular, both geographically and culturally. The mountains - where they are not terraced in rice paddies - are covered with tropical pine trees and rimmed with mist and fog. And the rice terraces are truly a World Wonder (at least according to the Philippinos). Thousands of years old, these handmade structures that are hewn out of rock and earth supply the basic food for the communities around them. Though they mostly grow rice in the terraces, other vegetables are cultivated as well and can be found every morning before the traffic gets too bad for sale in the streets.

The terraces are still being worked by the people of Sagada and we were pleased to learn that they can only be owned by community members, ensuring that the land will not be bought and developed by outside interests. As one local said, "We don't want Sagada to end up like Baguio."

We used our time in Sagada to relax, plan the next phase of our trip down south to Dumaguete, and to do some sightseeing. One day, we took a guided tour around the outskirts of the town to see the hanging coffins suspended from the limestone cliffs less than a kilometer from the main square. These coffins belong to the locals tribes. If you were important in the tribe you were preserved and hung from the cliffs, if you were a commoner your coffin was put in one of the caves around Sagada. Often there would be a chair attached to the coffin. The chair had formerly supported the corpse during the wake, and underneath the seat a fire would burn to help preserve the body.
Side note:unlike most of the Philippines, Sagada is predominantly Anglican now, not Catholic.


The next day Giovannina spent caving in Sagada with another guide Jolly and two french friends we had met hiking.

We hired Giovannina's caving guide, to take us on an overnight trip to the Mainit Hot Springs. The hike was about 20 km long and traced it's way through the rice terraces between Sagada and Bontoc. The hiking was not a leisurely stroll, but consisted mostly of ascending and descending small stone stairways that made up the walls and dikes of the terraces.

The scenery was spectacular and we were blessed with good weather, but goodness was it hard work. We consider ourselves to be avid hikers, but this was more strenuous than anything in the Cascades. Yet, we were regularly passed by people of all ages - kids, adults, elderly women carrying sacks - who seemed to bound across the landscape, wearing nothing more than flip-flops and often just bare feet.

According to Jolly, there are few roads in the area and so this is how people get from one town to another. These pathways through the terraces ARE the roads.


We stopped for lunch next to a large waterfall and swimming hole. While we took a dip to cool off, Jolly and his partner, Randy, cooked us lunch: stewed chicken with rice and salted pork. They don't mess around when it comes to meals, and after the hiking we did, we understood why.

We finally reached the Mainit Hot Springs around 4 pm, put our things in the little cottage next to the pools and went for a soak. Once again, we found ourselves in concrete pools with hot water pumped into them. It was quite relaxing until about 7 pm when folks started showing up. Holy Week was starting soon and folks were beginning their vacations, which meant late night party at the hot springs. After an hour of politely listening to a young man attempt to persuade us (in broken English) to visit his restaurant, we decided to retire to our bed. The long day of hiking did the trick and we were soon asleep.

We spent another day in Sagada, mostly relaxing and preparing for our 13 hour bus trip back to Manila. Woody did treat himself to one local delicacy the last day: Civet Coffee. It costs over $100/cup to buy this in the States, so at $5 a cup Woody felt like he was getting a deal. The coffee is so special because - I'm not kidding here - the beans have been eaten by a wild cat (actually a weasel) and then pooped out. Someone collects the beans (presumably washing their hands afterwards) and then roasts them. The finished product is a very good - and strong - cup of coffee. But save yourself the money (and the cat poop jokes) and just buy a very good French roast from your local shop, it's just as good.

To see photos of our time in Sagada, check out the web album.