Kate’s Winter Vacation

The next day, the tourist office and our Butanding Interaction Officer (butanding = local word for whale shark) told us that sightings of whale sharks were beginning to happen, but the previous day's excursion hadn't started seeing them till 1 pm. We headed out hopefully anyway, on a larger banca with five crewmen and (thank goodness) canopies to keep the sun off. We must have toured around Donsol Bay for nearly two hours when the boy on lookout on the roofpole started shouting. Then it was panic stations -- move, move, get out of your clothes (and in Daddy's case, into his wetsuit), snorkels and masks and fins on, and YIKES all jump over the side at once. You really have to jump almost together as the boat is still moving and you'd all get scattered if you took turns. The BIO grasped my handed and pointed downwards. I don't see it, I don't see it OH MY GOD here is a 5-metre shark with a wide-open mouth (okay, with a plankton strainer rather than teeth) swimming straight towards Kate. Our focus shifted to moving rapidly out of its way.

We found out that if you want to keep watching a whale shark you have to swim like fury to keep up with it. The BIO had little plastic hand-extenders to make his strokes more efficient. Richard and Kate got the knack of kicking to go fast -- I found that crawl stroke worked best for speed, though it rapidly became a challenge to the lungs. The shark stayed at depths between 1 metre and 5 metres for some time before it dove deeper and we lost it.

The exercise was repeated about four or five more times over the next couple of hours, as we circled in the smaller bay where we'd first seen a shark. Once we jumped in when two sharks were swimming together, and on three of the occasions we got a good long swim with them, limited in my case only by the length of time I could keep going at the required clip. Finally, though the boatmen were game to keep going for as many more swims as we wanted, I asked if we could call it quits. On the last couple of swims, I'd gone through long patches of those tiny stinging jellyfish. My upper lip (OW!), arms and legs were burning, and my abdomen felt as though a whole family had dived down the front of my swimsuit and couldn't get out. When I got the suit off, back at the resort, it was clear that I wasn't far wrong. Spectacular welts all over my breasts and torso, each and every one itching like fury. We had Polysporin itch relief with us -- only eight or nine months past its expiry date -- but it was not a fully comfortable night.

Oh and being New Year's Eve, of course, there were also the firecrackers, kids blowing noisemakers, and repeated beeping text messages from work associates wishing me the joys of 2008. Add this to the resort's cat in heat and the usual roosters, and I felt a bit short of sleep. Fortunately the memories of the whale sharks are worth it!