Day 15: He's A 'tute Man

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Herb had gone but Eric and Carla were seduced by the beauty of El Nido into staying another 2 nights. I was unable to convince them to drop the 18000pesos needed for dive certification so Tuesday, alone, I went diving for the first time in 7? years.

I headed to Sea Dogs Diving where a British expat runs the show. It was about $80 for 3 dives so who can argue with that. I fumbled with my equipment as our dive leader went over long forgotten hand signals we would be using. I dropped off the boat and we began to descend along a coral encrusted wall. 1ft wide giant clams clung to the wall and schools of brightly colored fish swam past.

One of my most vivid memories from my intro dives in San Diego was the Blue. As we dove all surrounding colors were lost to the water as the higher wavelengths of light were absorbed by the sea. At 60ft all was Blue. A rather dull and unassuming nudibranch was illuminated by a dive light and behold the Color! Grey blue wormy became red yellow green orange blue wormy!

When visibility is 100ft + the colors are already there. At 80ft deep, green and red corals glowed red and green and bright yellow striped fish flashed yellow past us. By the end of 3 dives we had seen 2ft long sea slugs, a lionfish, speckled ray, 4ft barracuda, crocodile fish, a grazing turtle, lobsters, giant clams, and 1 massive massive massive school of fish that sped past us for a good 3 minutes from start to finish. Not to mention the pristine varieties of tree-like soft corals, spiny and lumpy hard corals, and too many different types of clown fish-infested anemones to count. Simply amazing.

Had an easy night and next day after that workout. The next night was Eric and Carlas last and Jun, our tourguide for a few boat trips, wanted to take us out. We had some falafel and listened to a reggae band for a while but Jun wanted to party more. Carla went to bed and Jun was going to take me and Eric to a secret spot with some more music. Super secret spot. Top secret locals only style. AKA the first disco we went to when we got into town. This time Jun called the waiter and ordered some girls to come sit with us along with our drinks. "She is even better when you take her home" he said with a smile. "Ya... no im cool, thanks." I said. He didn't understand and had the young ladies sit with us. She was young, late teens, and very shy. I was uncomfortable as she and tried to make conversation. She moved her only a week ago and seemed very new to the sex trade. The 3rd time Jun told me to take her home with me, I repeated my disinterest. "Maybe you like the boys?" he suggested, pointing the the man-tutes wiggling crazy dance on the floor. "No, no, thanks though" i said. I had to excuse myself after a painful hour of forced conversation in broken english.

I woke up and found a 5 liter water jug outside my door. The last mark of the Minnichhofer to grace El Nido. I putzed around town, swimming, walking the beach, watching the world go by. When I got back to my hotel around 2pm there was a large group of men sitting, eating and drinking, as they tallied up sales for the week. The cheapest hotel i could find, 300pesos/night ($7), was also a favorite for the truck drivers and salesmen who came up from Puerto Princessa 2x a month. They offered me some rum and we had good laughs as I told them about Daly City and they tried to find me a Filipina wife from the street. I told them where we had been the night before.
"Did you meet the girls?" they inquired.
"I did" I responded.
"Take them home with you?"
"No" I said
"WELL WE BETTER GO BACK TONIGHT! HAHAHAHA" and they all broke down laughing.

For a country that is so conservative, they sure love their hookers.

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Comments

[Holmes]

words and pictures! money
glad someone is recording this stuff, at this rate all I'm gonna have when I get home is 1800 collar popping pics and my $5 waterproof watch...well maybe only the pics as my watch is surprisingly starting to get some rust, darn where's that receipt