As I said before, my hub group spent Sunday taking a trip to Donsol in Sorsagon. Before we even left Manila, we all expressed interest in going to swim with the whale sharks and our RVC managed to organize a group trip only 2 days after we arrived at our hub site. Our group driver and general go-to man Arnel (who is awesome!) used is day off to drive us 3 hours each way to Donsol and didn’t even go swimming. We all chipped in for gas and a nice tip for Arnel that would have paid for him to join us, but he decided to hang out on land and put the money to better use elsewhere.
Donsol is a small fishing town that until 8 or 9 years ago was relatively unknown. At that point the whole whale shark mass feeding in the harbor was brought to light and the butanding were hunted for their pricey meat. Eventually, the environmentalists stepped in to help stop them from being over-fished and capitalized on the eco-tourism thing. The WWF now employs the former fishermen to take tourists out on their boats to “interact†with the butandings. There’s a brief video you have to watch and a place to rent snorkel gear (no scuba allowed!) before you hop onto your boat. There were six people in our boat plus the four crewmembers.
From there we ride out until the guys spot a whale shark near the surface and they tell us which side of the boat to get on. At that point we all sit on the edge with our fins skimming the water until the guide shouts, “Go, go, go, go, go!” at which point we all jump in, trying desperately to avoid landing on one another and doing it anyway. Almost without fail I managed to also knock my head on the outrigger and scratched up my arm. After we all finish kicking and flailing around one another and clear the boat we swim after our guide and look and look. Then, out of the murky water there’s a HUGE shark head right under your feet- many times only a meter away. I would usually swim on down the length of the body and turn around as I neared the tail to follow it as it dove. Some of our group was better at diving down and they got some great close-ups. I gave my camera to Dave and he took some pictures for me, look for them in the photo gallery.
Once the whale shark disappeared we all would swim back toward the boat keeping an eye out for more, once we saw two in one jump. After we got to the boat there was the tricky task of removing fins and staying near the boat so we could climb up the ladder and back into the boat. All in all, we did that 16 times. It felt like we were out on the water all day, but it was only about 4 hours. Needless to say, we were all ravenous by the time we got back to the van with our lunch in it.
In total, the day was rather expensive on my PC budget, but was really inexpensive you all. I think I paid $30 total for gas, tip, registration fee, boat fee and gear rental. That’s a lot of pesos. However, I’ve heard that people try to do the same thing in places in Mexico with nowhere near our success at the cost of $400-500 a day. There were people there from all over the world- people spend thousands to travel to Donsol just for this. We were really luck and needless to say, I will want to do this again. There is a season for butanding, January-May- the peak being March and April. At this point, it looks like none of our batchmates will get to go until next season- since no one will have enough time to travel to Donsol until after our training is finished and the season is long over. So, if anyone has any interest in visiting and wants to go “whale sharking,” March is the time to be here!
Another interesting tidbit: our hub site was originally Legaspi. On our way home, we stopped through Legaspi for some food and internet and Corey (our resource volunteer coordinator) said that we were going to be there until Mt. Mayon shot off some ash a few weeks back. Peace Corps didn’t like the idea of putting us next to an angry volcano and moved us to Naga (near Mt. Isarog). Mt. Mayon is quite a site to behold, it’s the only perfect (I believe) cone volcano in the world and on our ride to Donsol I watched the sun rise behind it. Talk about a postcard picture!