3. Trike Trip to see The Falls

I’ve been having some more adventures … and lots more resting and diving, of course. A couple more excellent dives yesterday with my favourite dive guide (Jonny - a Filipino who has lived here forever and dived here for the last 25 years and done over 20,000 dives - this means he’s spent around 2 years of his life under water!!). He’s excellent - he sees everything and always points it out. Funny little shrimps, little lobsters hiding in the rocks, little moray eels with their heads poking out of holes and pipefish. I spotted the sea cucumber doing sea cucumber poops all by myself! And we watched more of the sardines dancing. All of this and an array of very pretty little nudis (the colourful slug looking things!).

Today (Wednesday), I got up early(ish) and headed to see some waterfalls - The Kawasaki Falls. A nice trike driver agreed to take me, wait for me then bring me back. It was interesting to drive out to the falls, going through little villages and into less urban areas. We saw the various traffic calming measures - which include places where they want drivers to slow down near to schools so they just put large barriers directly into the carriageway. This either encourages people to slow down and wait to pass …. or …. means they don’t reduce any speed but instead swerve round each other and into the oncoming traffic or even closer to the side of the road and anyone walking there! At some of the ‘busier’ road junctions, there are also traffic lights… what I mean by that is men who wear T-shirts that say ‘traffic enforcement officer’ on the front and have a picture of traffic lights on their back. They stand in the middle of the junction, hold out their hands to stop or gesture for traffic to go. All seems perfectly effective. Sometimes, when the traffic-light men are tired, they sit on one of the corners, perched on what ever they can find to perch on while having a smoke and watching the traffic weave!

Once we arrived at the falls, the driver directed me down a little track to find my way to the falls and told me he’d wait there for me! I made friends with a nice German lady who was also trying to find her way and we made our way there. Once we’d had our safety briefing (Welcome to our beautiful area, stay on the path, don’t drop little & have a lovely time - off you go), we walked along the track, which had some beautiful views of the jungle and through the cliffs and found the falls. It was less than a km walk and it was ok because I had my walking flipflops on but it was HOT! The falls were very pretty and not too overrun with other tourists so was very enjoyable - I was even brave enough (and boiling enough to need to cool off) to have a little swim (which they made you wear a life jacket for otherwise you wouldn’t allowed in. I’m not surprised the Asians can’t swim; if they only ever go into the water with a life jacket on, they’ll thinks it’s impossible. Those things are so uncomfortable and difficult to actually swim in!).

On my walk back from the falls, I noticed all the pretty plants and flowers - many of the plants that just grow naturally here are what we have as house plants in the UK. Lots of pretty flowers too - some of which might look familiar to the mother. (And any other gardeners!).

Once I returned, I read my book for a bit on the beach, had a chicken wrap lunch and a frothy coffee then treated myself to a massage. It went reasonably smoothly after I’d impressed upon the masseuse that it must be GENTLE. Disappointingly, I forgot to tell her not to pull my fingers and toes like they like too so when she did it, I rolled up my toes and squealed ‘ohh nooo’ at her, I think she thought I was ticklish but at least she stopped. A bit later, she then tried it again on my fingers and I tried to say ‘no’ but she hushed me and said ‘relaaaaax’ and proceeded to continue. THERE IS NOTHING RELAXING ABOUT SOMEONE TRYING TO DISLOCATE EACH OF YOUR FINGERS! Aside from that, it was all terribly relaxing and lovely. I could hear the person in the room next to me was so relaxed they had a lovely sleep and a lot of snoring. Seems a waste of £8 when you can have a sleep on your own bed for free!

A couple of evenings of lovely sunsets too - which coincide with low tide so are a good time to beach-comb and add to my shell collection. So far, none of them have walked themselves out of their lines so are all safe to keep and bring home! Final day of diving tomorrow (Jonny has put my favourite dive site on the itinerary tomorrow at my request - yay … I’d better make sure I tip him!) and then a hellishly long drive on Friday up the island to the very northern tip and a boat ride to the little island (Malapascua) that I’m visiting next. The island does have some (limited WiFi) I believe - but inconsistently and often quite poor so not sure when I’ll be back to report again. Will do my best!

PS: Mother - in answer to your queries about the salps as plankton ...

Plankton gets its name from the Greek word for 'drifter'. Plankton is any organism that is carried by tides or currents and that can't swim well enough itself to move against those forces. The two basic categories of plankton are phytoplankton (plants - usually the single-celled organisms although not always as some form colonies or are multicellular- seaweed, for example. They are capable of producing their own energy) and zooplankton (animals - which have to eat other organisms to get energy - often they eat phytoplankton). Zooplankton includes things like jellyfish and salps.