The power of eight seconds

Donsol

 

Part I

 

A dozen beers each wasn't enough to stop us waking at 6:30 to begin our journey to Donsol. Our chosen method of transportation: motorcycles.

 

Rainer, who had the bike keys for us, was a pathetic excuse for a human being in the morning, and kept us waiting, leaving us sitting on the front porch starting at the pouring rain.

 

Neither the rain nor Rainer's lateness - not our hangovers (which, as a matter of fact, were virtually non-existent in the Philippines) - would deter us from our mission. What might have was the total number of whale shark sightings - yes, sightings, not swims - over the past four days. Total sum - zero.

 

World famous Donsol, home of whale sharks, and close encounters of the underworld kind, devoid of all sea life, and left as another tired, seaside town.

 

We set off. Swags was utterly fearless for his first time on a motorbike.

 

Me, as the leader, got us promptly lost. Though I like to say, I didn't lead us astray, I led us to the district of Albany - the 'upscale' part of Legaspi. At 10:30am we found ourselves in the busy, congested, noisy part of town. We stopped in at the local Jollibee to get our bearings. We got bewildered looks from the staff as we treaded water through their restaurant - such was the state of our soaking wet good-for-nothing selves. It had poured with rain for the entire time we'd been on the bikes.

 

As it turns out, all we really needed to do was follow the same road right by our accommodation all 46km to Donsol. A downtown detour wasn't necessary, but it was fun. And there is something about the Philippines. You're meant to go right, you accidently turn left and end up in all kinds of situations - usually for the better.

 

As the city faded in the distance and the rain continued to pour down, our road narrowed, and we cruised through the lush countryside, sweeping through small villages (and waving) every so often, the locals getting only a glimpse of the famous Kiwi adventurers.

 

The countryside of Donsol

By the time we had reached Donsol - stopping numerous times to 'look' at the rice paddies and tropical jungles of the countryside - we saw the tiny 'tourist office' (shack) was closed. Our appetite for adventured hadn't waned, so we continued on driving, bravely going where no tourist - let alone white man - had gone before.

 

 

It's here where I sit back and reflect for a moment; what we did was something special.

 

The road narrowed and narrowed, until it was the width of a single footpath. The countryside was long and dense, thick with jungles and stretched with rice paddies. The villages - no electricity had seen these parts - yet schools, medical clinics, housing, all of it, were functioning as normal. These parts hadn't seen the modern world, and no Westerner had seen these parts.

 

Towards the 'Compound'

Or so I thought.

 

At the end of the road, after hours of driving, after sitting in tranquil villages and smelling charcoaled chicken and fish, after communicating without speaking - for one boy, who alone we stared at each other for over five minutes - after visiting life that wasn't touched by consumerism, or modernisation, or even, for that matter, the 20th century, we found a white man.  

 

We caught only a glimpse of him. Old, perhaps 60, slow, shirtless, tanned, walking back into his house in the dense jungle, walking as though life had been hard on him, miles from civilisation, here was a man living among the people. Children outside his house stared at the two Westerners on bikes, a man chopped bamboo with a machete, making speed bumps for the local road, a lone woman looked on in solitary silence. And all the while, the man inside brooded, breathed, lived. This was his place.

 

The ghost of Colonel Kurtz, the mysterious compound at the end of the river, echoed powerfully though my soul.

 

The road back to Donsol wasn't quite the same.

 

Swags and his bikes

 

Me on the other side

 

Part II

 

It was 2pm by the time we reached Donsol, our mission to swim with the whale sharks set back slightly by a drive for adventure - and of course, the Englishman at the end of the road.

 

In another stroke of good fortune - call it Kiwi luck - the last and final boat was called back just as it was sailing out. There were no people on it. We would be the last, and only boat on the water.

 

Last boat - we caught it just in time

As Derek would have said "You two jokers will land on your feet."

 

I don't know what Heaven, or the afterlife is like, but if it is anything like the flat, grey sea, the light, white sky, and the panoramic of ocean light, it can't be that bad.

 

We sailed for two and a half hours, our hopes fading by the minute. Swags spent half the time admiring his new 'leather' jacket. I stared at the ocean, sombre. Perhaps our luck had finally run out. There would be no whale sharks for us. The spotter on the end of the boat stared vacantly into space - he was already looking forward to a beer.

 

The Sea Pirates - about time for a beer?

And then it came.

 

I often think about interceptions in life, in chance encounters that somehow seem as though they were designed by a higher power, like the chance and fateful meeting of a friend, a wife, an employer. What was 'our' whale shark doing the previous night while we were eating curried chicken, drinking beer and smoking cigars? Would it know - could it - that for a few brief seconds our paths would cross, and us, two kiwi adventurers far from home, would come across this giant of the ocean and forever reinforce the power of the natural world?

 

The sea pirates reacted.

 

"Aye! Aye!" he screamed. The motor cut off. He reached for us. Fins on, snorkel fitted, let's go!! Follow me! We jumped. Swim. Swim. The water was cold. No time to feel it. Heart pumping. Lungs pounding. Eyes frantic.

 

And then, for 8 seconds, nothing.

 

The whale shark swam below me, slow and steady, silently drifting along just metres from my outstretched hand. My breathing shut out from around me, the splashing of fins and cries of the pirate, all faded away. Everything and everyone drew one last breath, one last connection to the living world.

 

Silence.

 

And then it was gone.

 

Magic moments happen infrequently in life. When they happen, we often wonder 'could I have done differently? Could I have changed something to make it better. Did I do enough?'

 

I don't know, but what I do know is this. When I rose out of the water, the ocean, the sky, the landscape, weren't the same to me. They possessed a presence - so still, so subtle - yet earth shatteringly powerful. I would never see nature the same way again. Never after witnessing the power.

 

The power of 8 seconds.

Part III 

The ride home was much like the ride there; wet, cold and uneventful. Why is it always like that? Is it just me, or is it the country; why do adventures seem to follow me around like a dark rain cloud?

 

We were used to being soaking wet by now, and we enjoyed riding for about half an hour while we still had light.

 

The darkness came. And the fog. And the rain. And the traffic.

 

I gripped the handlebars as hard as I could, peering through the handlebars as hard as my fading eyes would let me. Trucks and busses stormed past me; motorcycles zoomed ahead, while I just stuck to my Grandma's pace.

 

We eventually made it back, well into the night, but not before I had taken a wrong turn down a busy one way street, narrowly missed being smashed to smithereens, and handily rescued by the ever reliable Swags. We made it home, happy to see our friendly little tourist inn.

 

I slept with the whales that night, those silent and powerful creatures of the sea. What a deep sleep I had.

 

The whale sharks of Donsol (somewhere down there...)