somewhere down south of cebu lie the beautiful beaches of moalboal. not exactly pure white sand but it’s pretty close to it. fine grains of off-whitish sand. i would’ve wanted to use “mother of pearl” to describe the color of the sand to make me sound like the kind of kid who had a box of crayola containing 500 colors of crayons but the thing is, i don’t know what mother of pearl looks like. and when i was a kid, my mom could barely afford to buy me the 24-piece crayolas, justifying the fact that i break them the moment i touch them. (not exactly true.)

it’s ridiculous how the different shades of white are given very sophisticated names when one could easily just label them “off-white.” i don’t get it. if it’s not white but it still looks kind of white, then it’s off-white. simple logic. why make everything so complicated? (right. and this is coming from somebody who asks people for help in comparing two objects which are exactly the same and insisting that they are different if one just looks at them closely. but i swear i’m not exasperating to be with during those moments. lol.)

there are a lot of fun things to do in moalboal. most tourists go there to dive, as there are wonderful diving sites there, from what i’ve heard. but my friends and i are not the kind of people who’d go diving (read: broke) so we settled for the next best thing — snorkeling.

apparently, snorkeling is the practice of swimming at the surface of a water extent (typically of the sea) being equipped with a mask and a short tube called snorkel, at the scope of visually exploring the underwater environment. (got that verbatimly from here.) if you really wanna be technical about it and if i have to be brutally honest with you, what i was doing all the while — swimming there by the boat while simultaneously holding on to the bamboo poles for dear life — could not be considered snorkeling. in fact, i don’t think i was swimming at all. the boat was doing all the swimming, alright. i was just there being dragged.

as for the short tube also known as snorkel that was attached to my mask that was attached to my head, it was a useless device i had to endure simply because i couldn’t take it off. not that i tried. but really, the point is, i didn’t know how to use it. it was uncomfortable. ram told me to breathe through it but i kept messing up the breathing part — so much so that i was focusing more on trying not to breathe with my nose than i was focusing on the gorgeous colorful corals. that killed it for me. in the end, i decided to just hold my breath and enjoy the view sans that breathing apparatus. i would’ve enjoyed the experience a whole lot more with the jankurdt method of snorkeling but the idiot that i was (or should i use the present tense? lol.), every time i held my breath, the one line running through my head was: “how many seconds of not breathing does it take for your brain to experience anoxia?” gawd. i sure know how to ruin my own moment.

but for what it’s worth, it was fun. in my own little way, i had fun. lol. the corals were beautiful. very colorful. and then there were the fishes and the intriguing nooks and crannies down the sea. and there was the giant sea turtle too, which caused quite a frenzy among us. i caught a glimpse of it. it looked exactly like the image of a turtle that i had in my head. just as the corals were exactly like the ones i see on a regular basis in our videoke player — brighter, more colorful corals that i could stare and marvel at without having to alter my normal breathing pattern (except when i’m desperately trying to reach the high notes).

i’ll stop being sarcastic. ram was thrilled to have seen the giant turtle. it was like a dream come true for the dude. he went snorkeling there once before and he never saw any turtle. he was fiercely hoping to see one that time we were there. so you can just imagine his joy of finally being able to see it for himself. and the corals were indeed lovely. but we had overcast skies then so we weren’t really able to see them in full bloom, so to speak. i could just imagine how gorgeous they really are. just like the ones in our videoke player. hehe.

pardon the absence of underwater photos. in the first place, i don’t have an underwater camera. in the second place, granted that i had an underwater camera, how the hell can i take decent pictures when i myself am struggling to focus on keeping myself alive? food for thought. lol.

but i gotta say that the major highlight of the day for me was when i learned how to drive the boat. manong taught me how and i grabbed the chance. it was really fun. even though i couldn’t quite master the skill right away. it’s not something you easily get the hang of. because if you want the boat to go left, you have to turn the steering wheel to the right. and vice versa. kind of like reverse psychology. that was a great experience for me. the sadist bitch in me wanted to accelerate the boat’s speed without a moment’s notice and leave my friends (who were still down there snorkeling) nervously clutching on the bamboo poles while i’m having a little fun with the speed. even the thought of that now makes me laugh. i swear i have a sick sense of humor. lol.

the second highlight of the day were the rashes all over my body, mostly on my abs. (think well-toned abdominal muscles. lol.) i’m still suffering from those rashes now. if there’s any consolation to it, scratching feels so damn good!

seriously, though, do you guys have any idea how to treat this? it must have been the jellyfishes. jellyfishes are nice only when they are inside an aquarium where you can see them change their color every couple of seconds. outside of the aquarium, they can be a real itch in the abs. am scratching again now.

no sunset for me that day. we were probably on the east side so we couldn’t see it. but these photos are as good as sunset for me. taken in the late afternoon.

no sunrise photos either. i did set my alarm clock at 5am but i was too tired to get up. finally, at 8:45am i had to force myself to wake up so i can take decent pictures while i’m there. dragged ram with me for the beach-ly stroll. haha. we covered the entire strip of shore it sure felt like an exercise.

the good thing about aimless walking from west to east when your starting point is in the middle is that you’re bound to discover really wonderful sites. that is, if you get lucky. otherwise, it’ll only be a shitty experience for you. anyhow, we discovered this really rocky place with rocky stairs that led to a rocky cliff which had a rockin’ nice view of the sea.

and then we chanced upon two fishermen who uses spears to catch fishes. we just had to take a photo with them. because it’s amazing what they do. how they can stand holding their breath underwater for god knows how many minutes at a time. with that kind of skill, who needs a snorkel?!