Coral Cay Philippines: Days 1 & 2

I left Manila on the morning of 6^th October to catch a flight to Tacloban airport on Leyte.  The domestic terminal in Manila is rather modest and of course does not have for example screens with information on where and when flights are departing. That would be totally excessive in Philippines, informing people of their flight status!

With only minor delays I made it to Tacloban, having already found a Welsh bloke called Gareth at manila airport. Gareth was also on his way to Coral Cay Conservation project but he was going to spend 8 weeks on the project whilst I’m here for 10. We picked up another 4 volunteers in Tacloban – some of whom had already been in Philippines travelling for some time. All of us were staying with CCC for reasonable times, the shortest being Jacob with 4 weeks here and longest Cheryl with 26 weeks (!) with Coral Cay.

First night was rather chilled out: The usual introductions round, settling in into our accommodation and relaxing out on the porch. 

Coral Cay Base. Kitting area on left.

Gear washing tanks

Laundry line. Scuba shack in the back.

 After a bit of site orientation and some information on diving standards and Coral Cay, we had a short break before our dive. Me and Cheryl spent it cleaning up the cupboards and the bathroom in our room. The rooms were – oh well – as expected in a place that has dorm rooms, lots of people staying short terms and all cleaning done by the volunteers. That’s all I say.

Lounge and dining area

Kitchen

Sogod Bay area map

Wall painting of some of the target species

More wall decorations. Most of the indoor walls are painted with marine life.

The gang having lunch

My roommate is Cheryl and we got assigned the “Dirty Damsels” room. All the rooms have got marine life related names such as Saucy Sweetlips, Prawn Stars, Nudi Haven, Groping Groupers and pretty painted pictures on the doors. Our room is rather spacious and there is kind of an ensuite bathroom. Kind of an ensuite since the bathrooms are attached to the rooms - but there however isn’t any running water in the rooms. A bathroom without running water kind of takes some awesomeness off the term “ensuite”.

My room door

The so-called ensuite bathroom :)

We’ve got two buckets  in the bathroom. One of them we fill up from the sea with salt water – for flushing the toilet – and the other one gets filled up either from the tap behind the kitchen or from the well – fresh water for washing up. NO hot water, in other words – not that anyone really needs it when cold water is about 26 degrees. The recommended place for bathing is by the well as the well water is free of charge and for the tap water Coral Cay needs to pay for. (The building that we use as the base is actually given to us for free by the local government who is renting it and giving it for Coral Cay to use. )

After our “cleaning break” that we proceeded for a checkout dive on the house reef. The house reef is very pretty with lots of beautiful corals and reef fish. However, my dive experience on the reef was rather overshadowed by the fact that the one of the other teams saw two whale sharks… I can’t believe their luck, seeing a whale shark on the house reef (!) on the first dive. Lucky bastards. (I hate you Mike! I hate you, Joe!)

After the dive I experimented on the bucket bath by the well. Although Joe had warned us about it during the site visit, I still found it both hilarious and somewhat disturbing that two local men stood by the well where we do the laundry looking at me throughout the time that I was bathing in my bikini, washing my hair and rinsing off the salt water. Surely local girls don’t stand around in bikinis having a bath but still – it was just unbelievably entertaining watching the expressions on their face. They were literally staring at me. I thought I may need to collect their eyeballs from the ground after I’m done. Mysteriously enough their eyeballs stayed in their sockets and I did not get to feed them to the dogs.

Path to the "showers"

The well aka "the shower"

As if that wasn’t enough of an introduction to the local culture, once I got back to the base and was walking around taking photos of the place, our security guard who had sat down at the nipa hut waved me over and started doing introductions. He wanted to know my name, age and where I’m from. As I told him that I was 35, from Finland but living in Singapore he also shared with me that his name was Marvin, he was 42 years old and widower. Obviously he was looking for a new wife. He wanted to know whether my job in Singapore pays well. I said to him not so much but compared to Philippines salaries in Singapore are probably quite high. After this he explicitly told me he is looking for a new wife. So I was on the right track about his intentions. Oh well, he was a nice guy but I don’t think I will be his next wife who lives in Singapore and sends him his monthly allowance back so he can continue his comfortable life of doing nothing.

The Nipa Hut (and Marvin in it)

After dinner we had a lecture on Coral Cay and continued chilling out on the porch. We also found out what cleaning/helping tasks we were assigned to for the next day. I was on the porch cleaning team. Did not sound too difficult, I’ll find out tomorrow what it includes.