To market, to market...

After several weeks of sticking to a budget and being fairly disciplined with money, we decided to visit a travel agent to see what sorts of day trips we could take.  It was time to let someone else arrange all the minutiae for us and splurge a little.  We were thinking dolphin & whale watching.  The travel agent informed us that while there is always the chance that you could get lucky, this wasn’t the optimal time of year for dolphin and whale watching.  However…. had we considered going to Apo Island?  If we planned it right, on our way there we could even experience Malatapay Market!

We were picked up first thing in the morning and whisked to the Malatapay wharf in a comfortably air-conditioned SUV.  The driver was listening to doo-wop from the 50s; I recognized one of the songs ("I only have eyes for you" by the Flamingos, I think).  We threw our bags in the wharf manager’s office and then spent about half an hour walking around, taking it all in.  This huge outdoor market, also known as the Zamboanguita Market, takes place every Wednesday, bright and early.  By the time we got there, at 7:45, things were in full swing.  The traditional bartering system is still used and farmers & housewives from mountain villages come down to  trade with people from fishing towns & coastal villages.  

There were fruit stalls and vegetable stalls, shacks with fish or meat, others offering household items, clothing or jewelry.  There were places you could get breakfast; the dirty dishes were being washed, camp-style, in a large basin of water.  We decided to skip on food.  We passed a stall with large buckets of fish in varying stages of decomposition, on their way to becoming fish paste.  We could hear the angry squeals of pigs and the unhappy bleating of goats.  From behind us, a motorbike was slowly approaching, and we moved to the shoulder of the pathway to let him pass.  As he did, we saw two goats, their legs pinned together and then tied to the side of the motorbike!  We wondered how far they’d actually driven like that with the poor animals hanging upside down. 

At the end of the market, near the wharf, we waited for the pump boat that would take us to Apo Island.  I watched as a woman gutted & cleaned a very large fish, her arm disappearing for a while inside the cavity.  She emerged with the heart or lungs and plopped them on a cutting board.  It was then I noticed she had a watch on, just covered in blood.  She then proceeded to quickly wash her hands in a bowl of water, and then went over to chop up some onions & peppers.  Again, another reason why we didn’t eat at this market!  

One thing that we can’t get over is how eggs are sold in the Philippines -  next to the bags of chips and candy, right on the counter in every grocery store, supermarket or local sari-sari store.  Now, I use room-temperature eggs when I’m baking if I want to get lots of volume beating egg whites, let’s say for an Angel Food cake.   But I don’t think eggs make it into the fridge here at any point in time.  Well, maybe it’s not that big of a deal.  Before we realized the lack of refrigeration, we’d been eating the odd omelette for breakfast, and so far our stomachs haven’t been complaining.

A half an hour pump boat trip was all it took to get to Apo Island.  A perfect island hideaway (all 72 km of it) with part of the small 6-room resort cut into the rock face.  Upon arriving, our hosts, Kiki & Geraldine, suggested we snorkel immediately in order to catch a glimpse of the sea turtles.  It was incredible - we were surrounded by about 5 or 6 of these gentle giants at one point.  They were shy, but not afraid of us, which enabled us to really watch them as they foraged for their meal and went to the surface for some occasional air.  It was surreal; we felt like we were watching footage from National Geographic!

But Apo Island is known for the Marine Sanctuary on the other side of the island.  To get there is simple: a five minute walk through the barrio, home to about 300 people, and that's it - you're on the other side!  The sanctuary was clearly marked, so we swam to the beginning and floated back twice.  I love the experience of being surrounded by schools of fish... or when it's so quiet that aside from your own breathing, you can hear the fish eating!  Aron stuck his finger out and had a clown fish (a.k.a "Finding Nemo") rush at him, protecting his coral reef home.  However, these were, by far, the largest clown fish we'd ever seen - we didn't know they could get so big.

Later that night we sat out on the beach listening to the surf as fruit bats went about their business in the trees above.  Apo Island only gets power for a few hours a day and the electricity came on just after sunset.     We would definitely have to go to bed by midnight in order to take advantage of this and use the fan in our room.  The next day, Geraldine asked if she could join us on our chartered boat back to the mainland.  She wanted to go to a Fiesta in the town of Dauin, in honor of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino.  I asked her what there is to do at fiestas and she said, laughing, "Eat!"  Then she said there will also be a disco.  When we were loaded into the boat, another 8 family members came out of the woodwork to tag along.