Boracay

I should title this adventures in kiteboarding, because we came here solely on the advice of the Lonely Planet guide book. Advertised as the cheapest place in the world to learn to kiteboard, Boracay is a kiting paradise… with consistent trade winds and a nice sandy bay that’s sheltered by an offshore reef. The first time that I had encountered this sport was about 6 years ago when Ana and I went to Tahiti on vacation. There, I saw a guy wakeboarding on the open ocean… but instead of a boat, he was being pulled by an enormous sail floating in the air! If that wasn’t cool enough, he was pulling mad aerial stunts 10 feet in the air: effortlessly floating through the breeze like he was parasailing! I had two questions at that moment: 1) what the hell is that called, and 2) where can a rent one? Unfortunately for me, no one one the island rented such equipment back then. I would have to try my hand at this “kiteboarding” sport some other day. And that other day just got scheduled in: A kiteboarding Christmas in the Philippines… Let’s do this.

Ana and I each signed up for 12 hour lessons: supposedly just enough to have you riding a kite in a straight line in either direction. On top of this we had a free 1/2 day of gear rental thrown in for signing up, so we had 4 days set up on the water for a crash coarse in kite control. The first day was fairly tame, with much of our time spent on the beach learning how to steer small (2-3 meter long) trainer kites. These things are quick and maneuverable, so they are easier to turn. As an added bonus, their surface area is quite small, so the danger of getting dragged along the beach is pretty small. At this size (I was using the 3 meter kite) the pull is small but still noticeable: I could see how one could get seriously injured with a larger kite. From here we moved on to a larger 7 meter kite which included a body attaching harness to pull you along (There would have been no hope trying to hold on to a kite this size with your arms). The goal of the exercise with the larger kite was “body dragging” which is as just as ungraceful and awkward as it sounds… The idea being to point the kite downwind to experience the pull on your body. This is supposed to help with practicing steering by flying a figure-8 pattern through the power zone in the wind window. Yea… easier said than done. My modulation was strictly binary. I could either crash the kite and not get any power, or accidentally hit the peak power spot and get pulled completely out of the water. Yikes! Did I mention that this is a fairly dangerous sport?

Day 2 saw us practicing more body dragging, except this time we were supposed to try and travel left or right of downwind by tightening our figure-8 loops to either the left or right of 12 o’clock of the wind window. Again, this was easier said than done. Pretty consistently I would get excited, thinking that I was mastering the art of steering… only to stop and discover that I had still gone completely straight. This was maddeningly difficult! By the middle of the morning I was getting pretty frustrated, and if that wasn’t enough I was paying so much attention to the kite overhead that I forgot to watch where I was going in the water. You see, it was low tide and not all of the beach has a nice sandy bottomed floor. Out of carelessness and inexperience, I had managed to body drag myself across some coral sitting about a foot from the water’s surface. Ouch! Time to take a break and find some bandages. I didn’t really need all that skin on my shin anyway… Later that day I braved bacterial infection to practice body dragging upwind: probably one of the most difficult skills to figure out. Aside from catching the wind (wind deflection) the kite can also act like a wing, producing lift at a normal angle away from the lines. If you park the kite sideways to the wind (2 or 10 o’clock), the kite will pull you perpendicular to the wind… at which point you can angle your body to tack against the wind direction. Super duper difficult. I think that I was able to do this maybe once or twice.

Day 3 actually got us on a board to try our hands at standing up and riding. Man… this was pretty comical. To all of you who have been wakeboarding with us in the early learning days, you might have some idea of how our day went: Butts dragging, water up the nose, kites crashing, face plants… lots of face plants. It was extra frustrating at first, as the wind seemed a bit weaker than the day before and the kite was difficult to keep up in the air. By mid day I had swapped out for a bigger kite (all the way up to 14 meters, gulp.) to try to compensate and finally was able to get up on the board… speeding uncontrollably downwind on my left heelside. It took me a while to figure out how to stop. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had lots of practice stopping during the morning: you simply face plant once again when you run out of rideable water! Ok, not really… you’re supposed to park your kite overhead and water start in the other direction. Again, easier said than done! Man this sport is hard. It’s frustrating and difficult… but getting up out of the water and hauling ass along the beach is a serious hoot. I definitely recommend giving this a try if you have a chance.

Day 4 was a bit of a disappointment as the supposedly consistent winds somehow died down to almost 5-6 knots: not even a big kite was going to pull us out of the water this day. We spent most of the time watching and waiting… and walking around and doing a little wind dance to change our fortunes. Alas it was not meant to be. We would have to hone our new skills some other day at some other beach.

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/Boracay

Map of Boracay: Click Here

Tags: Boracay,Philippines,kiteboarding

Malapascua

The Philippines: You can’t help but smile as this country defiantly avoids categorization. Just when you think you got a place figured out, something completely wacky happens. We arrived from Hong Kong to the regional capital of Cebu, located in the heart of the Visayas Islands. Our target destination was a little island called Malapascua, a (relatively) short bus and ferry ride away. The ride to the port of Maya was uneventful… well, except for Ana getting whacked in the face by some palm branches through the window (bus drivers use all available road space). The ferry ride on the other hand was a rough experience. First of all, the “ferry” was nothing more than a glorified double-outrigger canoe with an engine: not exactly ideal for the high seas. And the seas, they were high. I wasn’t completely convinced that the boat was going to stay afloat, as we took on a lot of water with waves crashing over the bow. The worst part was that our bags (and myself) were sitting on the front of the boat, so all of our clothes got completely soaked. Oh well… at least we were in better shape than the smaller boat next to us: the one with the small girl in the back bailing water out at a frantic pace. Yikes! We sat next to a group of local Filipinos for the trip and were immediately offered some local treats of sweet corn tamales that were pretty delicious. Man, people here are so friendly! The group was headed up by the gregarious and absolutely charming Hector, who quickly befriended us and peppered us with questions: “Hello, What is your name? Where are you from? How many children do you have? How did you hear about Malapascua?”  Hector was excited when he heard that we live near San Jose, as he has some relatives that live nearby: “Ah, you know Milpitas? My cousin was the mayor of Milpitas!” Small world!

The island itself is pretty small: You could walk around it if you had a couple of spare hours. We stayed a bit off the main drag, on the opposite side of the village to Bounty Beach. Bounty Beach is the longest (and nicest) beach on the island, so that’s where most of the resorts and shops are located. We came into town to eat dinner the first night… lured in by the promise of cheap ($0.50) beers and an all you can eat buffet on the beach. During our dinner an impromptu live performance started up, headlined by 3 gay cross-dressed ladyboys. The show was quite elaborate, with dancing and lip-synced musical acts. At one point, there was even a fire breathing show! Ana kept asking for the camera, but I was hesitant because I figured that they would probably ask for a tip (JOB: mind out of the gutter!). Sure enough, the three came by our table asking for contributions to their fundraising cause: something to do with Christmas and gay awareness or something. When Ana pulled out her change purse for a (admittedly small) contribution, the middle ladyboy whispered “bitch!”, flamboyantly pirouetted with one wrist in the air and strutted off indignantly. Seriously, I’m not making this stuff up… I don’t have the creative genius to make this stuff up! Too funny.

Malapascua is pretty famous for scuba diving, especially for catching a glimpse of some big marine life. The thing to do here is to wake up early in the morning to get a sighting of some thresher sharks off of an underwater island called Monad Shoal. Here, the thresher sharks circle patiently… waiting to get cleaned by smaller fish picking off parasites. Supposedly this is one of the few “guaranteed” places in the world to see them, as they normally hang out in deeper waters. The chance of spotting a thresher shark here is something like 80%, so we were (kind of) willing to overlook the 5:00am wake up call. Our dive party consisted of myself, Ana, our dive instructor James, and another dive master named Adrienne who was tagging along for the dive (Hi Adrienne!). Pretty amazing diver to dive master ratio considering that diving here costs an affordable $30 per person. Sitting at the bottom of about 10 meters of water, we waited for about 30 minutes and saw absolutely nothing. I couldn’t believe our rotten luck: We were going to be the 20% statistic that didn’t see the sharks. Then, finally, one of them appeared… taking shape through the murky, low visibility water. It swam right by us, checking us out with one sideways looking eye. I could barely get my camera set up in time before it swam off out of view. A few minutes later, another thresher came up from a different direction and actually circled around us for a loop before swimming off. Pretty cool, but I was a bit anxious to have the big guy go out of my peripheral vision behind us. Finally, we were quite lucky to see another two sharks circling each other before having to surface back to the boat. All in all, a total of 4 sightings. Not bad!

Back on shore we met up with some of the other people staying at our resort. As it turns out, most of them were actually on the island on business: engineers setting up the new power plant to deliver electricity to the island 24 hours a day (previously on 6 hours). We took a tour of the plant with Marilyn, a young electrical engineer from Manila, and were duly impressed with the scale of the operation: This is going to change a lot of things here. Malapascua may not turn into the next Boracay, but it will probably get blown up with development in the next couple of years… so book your trip now! Anyway it was great hanging out with all the guys from Big Foot engineering every morning for breakfast: Hope you guys had a great Christmas party!

Check out the picasa web link for our photos of Malapascua: http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/Malapascua

And here is where Malapascua is on a map of the Philippines.

Tags: Philippines,Malapascua,thresher shark,power plant

Hong Kong

Getting to the Philippines can be a pain in the butt. Any way that we tried to arrange it, we were stuck with some kind of lengthy stopover… With our plane tickets, it really didn’t make a difference if we stopped over for 2 hours or 2 days (exact same cost)… so we figured we might as well check out this little town called Hong Kong along the way. Hong Kong is a great town. It’s super walkable (or escalatorable for the hills), and is pretty compact as the city is hemmed in between Victoria Harbor and the very steep Victoria Peak. We stayed across the harbor in the Kowloon district which is where most of the shops and stuff where. Staying across the water was definitely the way to go, as the views across to Hong Kong island are pretty awesome. The city skyline is pretty recognizable from this perspective, especially at night where the Bank of China building lights up in its distinct lattice of interlinked triangles and the IFC building claws skyward to Victoria Peak. Our main goal here however was to sample some local Chinese food… as I declared to Keith over the phone last week. Keith was a bit skeptical about my proclamation: “Mosko, you can’t fly to Hong Kong for a day just to have Dim Sum!” Ah, but you can Keith! All of the “sightseeing” stuff is just an elaborate pretext for a fantastic brunch. Nothing wrong with that.

Check out our pictures here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/HongKong

and here is the location of Hong Kong on the Map.

Tags: Hong Kong,Kowloon,Victoria Harbor,Dim Sum

Great Barrier Reef

One of the things that Australia is famous for is the Great Barrier Reef… and we were set to explore it in style. At 4 times our budget, it was a bit of a splurge for us, but for 3 days we would be pampered aboard the Spoil Sport for some some scuba diving along the world’s largest barrier reef. We had heard from a few people that some of the outer reefs were pretty badly damaged from too many visitors over the years, so we wanted to sign up for a liveaboard that took us off the beaten track. Rich Hudnut and Steve Kuo both gave some good recommendations for dive operators to use, and it was a toss up that we ended up going with Mike Ball’s operation instead of aboard the Spirit of Freedom… Basically the departure schedule lined up better for us with the Spoil Sport. In either case, the passenger to crew ratio was a ridiculously low 2-to-1, with only 20 some odd divers aboard: We weren’t going to be bumping into too many other people in the water.

Usually the dive boats only transport people in one direction… either out towards Lizard Island or back from Lizard Island. You can sign up for a complete round trip, but this takes all week and is insanely expensive. As our trip was scheduled to depart from Lizard Island, we began our journey with a spectacular low level (500ft) flight over the outer barrier reef. Here we had a unique overhead perspective of the reef, even seeing some of the day-trip boats moored up with snorkelers in the water! The reefs looked fine to me, but I supposed it’s difficult to see any damage from that high up. As we approached Lizard Island, I got my first glimpse of the Spoilsport anchored in a calm, turquoise bay. She looked a little dated and maybe needing of a fresh coat of paint… still, she was sleek and ready to run. I was giddy with anticipation.

Day 1:

On our first day we were scheduled to visit two dive sites: Snake Pit and Cod Hole. Cod Hole is the dive spot that everyone comes out here to see. As the name implies, this site is populated with a school of rather large potato cod fish. These guys can get to be as big as Ana, but tend to be pretty laid back: They don’t mind too much if you swim up to them. One thing that was cool was that we went for two dives out at Cod Hole… one during the afternoon and one at night. The night dive was interesting in that the potato cods became noticeably more active than they were during the day. Their hunting style is pretty comical in that they have become quite used to divers wandering around at night. Whenever someone shone their torch(flashlight) on something tasty, a potato cod would come swooping in and inhale the little critters whole… the spectacle punctuated by an audible “WOOMP!” of the cod’s smacking lips (and sometimes with the cheers of the sporting torch holder). I nearly choked from laughter at one point as Martin (a fellow diver from Sydney) led one unsuspecting fish to its demise and then promptly raised both fists above his head in show of victory!

Day 2:

We started off our day with a (very) early morning wake up call to start our first dive at a place called Pixie Gardens. This place was great in that the whole terrain was filled with hard corals of varying shapes, sizes, and colors. Green corals, blue corals, pink and yellow corals… it was a virtual kaleidoscope down there! In addition to all the coral, every now and then one would find great giant clams embedded within the stone formations. These guys were immense at over 4 feet wide… and surprisingly quite colorful! With it’s shell open, the tongue would be iridescent blue and purple… not the fleshy pink and tan that one would normally expect.

After lunch and a brief presentation on reef ecology, we arrived at our 2nd dive site of Lighthouse Bommie. Lighthouse Bommie looks kind of how the name implies: It’s a spiraling cylindrical tower that rises from the sea floor, forming a lighthouse type of structure. This makes for a great dive site as one can see lots of different types of fish that like to hang out at different depths… just start at the bottom and circle your way around and up back to the top of the Bommie (a Bommie is an Australian term for an isolated, tower-like reef structure). We saw lots of cool things here like lion fish and different schools swimming around. Probably the most unnerving thing to see here were the sea snakes(!) cruising around the bottom and swimming around amongst us. I’m pretty sure that these guys are potentially poisonous, but they seem to not really be bothered by divers swimming around. I still couldn’t help but feel nervous though. For this dive we dove with a couple from Phoenix named Bruce and Carmen, who recently quit their jobs as physicians and are about to travel the world for 6 months! Bravo, guys… Bravo! Hopefully your travels will be full of adventure before settling down to your new jobs in New Zealand. Mahalo Bruce, and good luck.

Day 3:

For our last day on the boat, we started off by visiting Steve’s Bommie, another one of Australia’s famous dive spots. This place, much like Lighthouse Bommie, has lots of different types of fish that cruise around at varying depths. The two things to see here are the stonefish and the feather tipped scorpion fish (I think that’s what they are called)… two types of fish that camouflage themselves to blend in with the surrounding coral. The stonefish were easy enough to spot, but the scorpion fish were sadly not to be found that day. In any case the stone fish were pretty cool. They were pretty difficult to spot at first, but if you waited long enough, they would move and suddenly appear out of the rocks! Awesome.

Finishing off our tour we hit Flare Point, our last dive site. Flare point was cool because we saw a lot of unique things that were rare to spot. For this set of dives, Ana and I were one of the first ones off the boat, so we had a better chance to see some of the shyer underwater life before they got scared off. At one point, we saw a turtle swimming in the shallow coral, then spotted another one swimming in the deep… only to have it cross paths with a huge manta ray! Quite rare indeed. Our second time down presented us with a sting ray hiding on the sandy floor and a couple of cuttlefish hovering above some mid-level corals. The cuttlefish were eerie looking as they looked like they sneezed out a set of tentacles forming a snout… Ewwww! :-) Seriously though, hovering in place like some underwater dirigible… these guys were quite alien to look at.

Impressions:

All in all, I think we went on about 10 out of the 12 dives over 3 days: pretty amazing. This was the first time that either Ana or I had the good fortune to have a dive computer for our dives, and it’s amazing how easily the computers keep track of things over multiple dives… It computes how long you have been down over multiple days, remembers the amount of nitrogen in you blood, and lets you know exactly how long you can stay down at any depth: All of this done in real time. Pretty cool. It’s no wonder that no one uses dive tables these days. I just wish that the things weren’t so expensive. Our overall experience on the Spoil Sport was a great one, with a super friendly crew and surprisingly great meals every day. If we wanted to dive on our own, we had pretty much full freedom to go our own way. If we wanted someone to show us around, there always seemed to be a dive master around to point out the more elusive marine life. To anyone who can afford it, I would definitely recommend this trip.

Click Here to see the route that we took through the Great Barrier Reef.

…and Click Here to see where the Great Barrier Reef is in Australia.

as always, our photos are archived on picasaweb, so feel free to head over and check them out: http://www.picasaweb.com/richmosko/GreatBarrierReef

 

Tags: Australia,Great Barrier Reef,Cod Hole,Spoilport,Lizard Island,Diving,SCUBA

Sydney

La-Dee-Da-Dee… We like to Party: And boy does Sydney know how to party. We spent a week in Sydney, arriving on a Sunday afternoon, and it was interesting to see a fun-loving city just get itself ready and warmed up as the week progressed. Sunday and Monday things were a bit quiet with Wednesday (hump day) showing signs of increased life. By the time Friday came around people were ready to shed their corporate personas and revel in some good natured debauchery… and by debauchery I mean loads of drinking. I know, I know… Australian stereotype! But at least there wasn’t a Foster’s can or barbie’d shrimp to be found anywhere. Every bar was packed though, with most people not bothering to make a stop home… opting instead to head out straight from work. What’s crazy here is that fashions seem completely upside down (sorry) from what we’re used to. At one point Ana leans over and asks, “When did the mini-skirt make a comeback?”. The funny thing is that I think around here the mini-skirt never left: Don’t call it a comeback! In addition to the mini-skirt, the colors and accessories seem straight out of the 80’s: shiny glittering dresses, hoochie skirts and stiletto heels… It’s like every woman here was heading off to prom or something. Surprisingly they seem to be able to pull it off without a hitch. This begs the question though: “If tight mini-skirts are mainstream, what does a woman have to do to make a provocative fashion statement?” No sooner does this thought pop in my head, then three women come walking down the street wearing nothing but glittering bikinis and feather headdresses straight out of a Brazilian Carnival. Hmm… I guess that’ll do the trick. Mental Note: I need to tell Carlos Silva that he’s living in the wrong city. ;)

While out here we met up with some familiar faces which is always a treat. This time our friends Meelan and Carey were vacationing on the Great Barrier Reef, and they lined up their time in Sydney to coincide with ours. This was great for our sightseeing prospects as they already had a lot of activities planned and scoped out… Not so good for our livers though, as we ended up going out drinking every night! Good times guys, good times! We did manage to make it out of the city at some point, and took a train out to the country to see the famed Blue Mountains. They say that as one gazes through the sunset haze, the distant hills turn a striking shade of blue… something to do with the air scattering all visible wavelengths except for blue. Personally I think that someone had an overactive imagination while naming the place (it looked green to me). Still the area is quite beautiful once you tear yourself away from the crowds and tour buses. The mountains are dramatically shaped into sheer drop-offs: the result of some tectonic collision millions of years ago. What’s cool is that you can see a bit of the geological timeline by counting and examining the differing layers that stack together to form the towering cliffs.

A final note: We once again ran into our favorite Brit and Aussie couple, as they were set to head off to Perth the next day. Dave and Jen: Cheers! you guys will be missed. Also Meelan, you are now responsible for bringing the mini-skirt-prom-dress fashion wave back to the states (I’m holding you to your word). Don’t let the Aussies down! It should make a big splash at the next Atheros holiday party. ;)

Check out our photos of Sydney: http://www.picasaweb.com/richmosko/Sydney

and Click Here to see a map of of where Sydney is in Australia.

Tags: Australia,Sydney,Blue Mountains,mini-skirt,prom dress