Boracay

Weekend trips here are usually given a two or three word theme, such as “Local experience”, “malaria epidemic”, or “Do we have to leave?”. Last weekend was our tropical paradise vacation on a southern island called Boracay.

From the hotel balcony.

It all started with a 5am drive to the airport, a short flight south, a trike ride (think of a motorcycle with a sidecar), a quick bamboo ferry ride, and one final trike ride to the hotel. All told the trip took about 4 hours and we were there for breakfast. The island of Boracay is basically two long parallel beaches joined at the ends by short volcanic cliffs. Each beach has a row of shops, restaurants and hotels, which at high tide are about twenty feet from the waves. Vendors selling watches, sunglasses, shells, tattoos, and massages, wander back and forth along the one dimensional town politely offering their wares.

Two hotels on the beach

I went on two dives off the coast over small coral gardens; nothing too challenging but stunningly beautiful none-the-less. If I name every fish we saw I’ll be here all day so I’ll keep it to the highlights. Clownfish in their anemones, it turns out, are just as cute as Pixar depicted. Clownfish also make for great entertainment underwater; fiercely protective of their anemones, they will charge anything that comes near regardless of size. The anemones themselves are velvety soft and a hand placed in the center receives a pleasant massage by the hundreds of tentacles. At one point, I came across a cave of lionfish which reminded me very much of a pride of lions watching over their territory in an underwater savannah.

Lionfish over a reef (picture credit to AMPFD)

My dive guide had a metal baton that he used to signal and to point out interesting sights. At one point he coxed a mantis shrimp to attack the baton; the attack was so fast you could only hear the loud clang and see the dent left in the metal.

Clearly, I have to go again!