3rd October - Coron - heading for El Rio y Mar (Busuanga)

Friday 3^rd October

Mermaid water

Today we hope to be leaving Coron for a few days, maybe to go right around Busuanga Island.  We are still waiting for poor (Seadive) Jim to return from Manila, so Pete can discuss details.  But…his plane has been cancelled, twice, which is, says Lisa, from the dive shop, making steam come out of his ears!  With a bit of luck Pete will see him early tomorrow morning.

Lisa and Pete

We ate some more fabulous little lobsters today.  As Pete says, Why would you ever eat anything else?  So delicious, so cheap!  He (yes, our Pete, the recluse,) struck up a conversation with an English girl sitting nearby.

Rachel has only just arrived here.  She is planning to do some diving, and is trying to work out how to get to her next destination – Apo Island – without having to sit on the bamboo deck of an outrigger boat for ten hours, as she did on her way here from El Nido. I thought she might like to come for  a swim out to the little reef with me, so we took her out to 2XS and I lent her some bathers and snorkeling gear.

Captain Pete kindly took us out to the reef in the dinghy – it is very hard to find it, while swimming – and there was no current in operation, so we were able to have a good look at the coral and the fishies before swimming back to 2XS.  I found a beautiful grey and white striped sea snake to show Rachel.  She was very brave but I could feel ripples of fear coming through the water towards me…

In the morning we both peered intently across the water, looking for signs of rain.  And I saw…a tail, flipping out of the water! Like a small whale’s tail, very jaunty.  Pete missed it, but I saw it three times before it vanished.  I tied to described it o him, then I got it – it was a perfect mermaid’s tail!  I must have seen a dugong!  Mystical magical shy creature of the sea!  Of course there is no photo…but this is the water in which it lives, at sunset…)

(We might be out of internet connection for a few days – heading towards El Rio y Mar on the other side of Busuanga.  All things being equal…)