Memorial Day

We may be developing a favorite spot for 3-day weekends.  We went back to the Puerto Galera area this past weekend, about a mile or less from the Coco Beach resort we visited for Columbus Day.  This time it was Sabang Beach, on the same spit of land, but a much more commercialized area – think Ocean City MD vs. Assateague Island.  Sabang is the Diver’s Spot of this area; the closest really good diving to Manila, so a popular getaway spot.  The Memorial Day and Columbus Day holidays are especially nice because they’re not observed in the Philippines, so they don’t draw larger-than-normal crowds… I assume Labor Day in September will be similar, since Labor Day is May 1st here and nearly everywhere except the US.  By then, though, we’ll be a family of 3, and travel might be contraindicated for a little while.    Remember in February, when I went swimming with the whale sharks?  Well, that was supposed to be we went swimming with the whale sharks, but Lisa was feeling punky and didn’t go.  The organizer of that trip runs a scuba shop and travel outfit in Puerto Galera, and he offered to credit us back Lisa’s portion of that whaleshark trip as credit at his diveshop in Sabang Beach.  So we went down this weekend; Lisa’s not supposed to dive while pregnant, so we asked the divemaster to pick a site that had good snorkeling possibilities for her, while I went under, and they were able to accomodate us quite nicely.  It was my first time back in dive gear in over a year, so I didn’t take the camera down for my first trip; I figured I had enought to keep track of.  Kind of too bad, though, because I got my first-ever look at Giant Clams, and they’re pretty cool.  I never really knew what they meant by “giant,” but the biggest ones were 5 feet across or more – pretty awesome!  I did a little snorkeling later to get some underwater pictures, but nothing spectacular.  I dove again on Monday morning, since there was no plane flight to worry about, but again opted not to take the camera, as it was a fairly technical and very deep dive, to 100 feet in a pretty fair current.  That too was very nice – the nicest thing about the whole deal is that all these dive sites are 5 – 8 minutes from Sabang by boat – no long boat rides, no bobbing on the surface getting seasick for 2 hours and 20 minutes while you wait to be de-saturated enough to dive again – the shore’s so close we just come back in, go out again later.  Mostly we hung out on the beach.  We ate quite a few really good meals, from bratwurst and sauerkraut to blue marlin creole; the restaurants down there were surprisingly good.  This was the wurst-and-kraut place:

Lisa at Villa Sabang

I know, “right on the beach!” right?   Well, it’s ALL right on the beach – the whole “town.”  Cuz right behind the beach is mountain, like Haiti or Jamaica’s north shore.  So the easiest way to walk “across town” is actually to walk the beach, and then go up onto the concrete sidewalk that amounts to the town’s main street.  It’s a tiny little place, but bustling with activity, and a lot of fun. 

I’m signed up for the FSOT, or Foreign Service Officer Test, to be conducted here in Manila (right here at the Seafront Compound, in fact) on June the 11th.  It’s a long, long process, so it’ll be quite a while before we know anything for sure, but this is the first step  – Wish me luck!