Massage and a waterfall trip

Two cute girls were standing outside the resort, asking if we wanted massage. I had politely said no thanks, as I am not the biggest fan of massage

 One afternoon when we returned from the dive, they greeted me with, Hi Danny. I was a little surprised, but nothing seems to surprise me in this place anymore. It turned out it wasn’t that strange after all as it was Martin who had talked with one of them, Rachel, in the morning about massage after the diving.

He had ok’ed on my behalf it seemed, so now I couldn’t really say no. Oh well, we took a quick shower and the girls came over. This was the chance to talk to a local girl about life in the Philippines, young and adult.

It turned out that Rachel had been studying to become a nurse when she was a little younger, but had to quit because she could not afford it. On top of that, she had gotten a kid at the exact time that she left school. I asked if she chose the kid over her education, she smiled and didn’t say anything. She was asking to life in Denmark as well, couldn’t understand I was still single and no kids, almost 35 years old :-) It works a little differently in the Philippines. They get married and have kids when they are around 20. Of course that doesn’t describe everyone, but in general I think it is not far from the truth.

The massage was over and somehow we had also agreed to buy some handcrafts from them. They were very nice girls, so how could we say no to them? On top of that it was almost no money.

They would be there every dive, when we got out, waving, saying hi, wanting to see pictures of what we saw today. They had never been diving, in fact, one of the girls didn't like water as she couldn't swim! We

We had a massage another afternoon again, they were very interested in what we were seeing underwater. This time Joan was going to give me massage. She was a couple of years younger, a little shyer than Rachel, but had so many questions, haha. She was very interested in how many girlfriends I had had, since I wasn’t married yet.

I started counting and when I reached 500 she had heard too much. It was very confusing to her as the Philippines is a Catholic country and so they have the rule, never kissed, never touched until they are married. Before marriage, she had been dating 2 other guys, she called it puppy love, never kissed or anything with them. Then when she was 19 she got pregnant with her boyfriend and so that was that. The thing was that they were not married yet, which I guess is a little uncommon.

We had an early morning dive, saw the usual fish and other critters, we are getting too familiar with the dive sites here. The girls were already waiting for us, their friends Mac-mac and his partner picked us up in their boat which we had leased for the day.

They took us to a waterfall an hour boat ride away, where we took a tricycle up the hill to the actual waterfall. The poor little 125 could hardly make it. The driver, 2 girls, 4 guys plus food and drinks was all too much, and it struggled up the hill in walking speed.

The driver had to keep it in first gear all the time covering the jungle in a thick smoke, because it could not pull us in second gear. We eventually made it, but the moped looked like it was going to explode, there was smoke coming from it everywhere, even the driver looked a little anxious. The waterfall was much taller than I thought it would be, and the plateau where we were going to have lunch was in the middle of the hillside, meaning the water fall continued on both sides. Small pools had been made and people were able to swim around in the water here.

The girls had bought a fresh tuna fish this morning at the market, plus prepared a wide selection of foods. They barbequed marinated chicken and pork, the fish, it was super fresh and delicious. There were different fruits which Martin had never seen before, he looked surprised, haha

We were also introduced to the Philippine hot pepper. It packed a good punch, even though it was smaller than a pea, size doesn’t matter! They thought we were crazy eating those peppers, I guess they were right.

After lunch we went into the small pools to cool down, the water temperature at least made us cool down. The girls were really nice, making sure we had what we needed and constantly asked if we needed something or wanted to go somewhere.

We took the same tricycle down again to the boat. This time there was almost no need for the engine, it was a matter of braking all the way. I noticed the driver stopped using his foot brake after a while as it didn’t do much good, now he was frantically squeezing the front brake, I found that a little worrisome.

When the road finally flattened, I could breathe again, I saw the driver do the same, haha.

We jumped on the boat and sailed for 20 min or so, before we were at the Hidden Beach. I have no idea how they could find it, because it was supposed to be hidden, right? The beaches here are not like the sandy beaches of some tropical island, in fact they are pretty horrible stone small stones and coral pieces, very disappointing. They told us it is volcanic stones and that's why most of the beach is black. In fact, the fine white beaches you see around are mostly due to some of the fish eating the corals, then pooping fine white smooth "sand" that you will happily lay on, roll in and build sand castles off. Maybe they should be renamed to poop castles?

Joan was sitting on the beach, with a distant view in her eyes. I asked what the problem was, at first she didn't want to talk, but then said that we were such nice guys, but soon we would leave and forget them. Well, somewhere in the back of my head, I knew we had to leave again soon, but that should be more of a worry for me than her, right?

Being a tourist, traveler or what you want to call it, whether you want it or not, you leave memories with the people you meet and interact with, it is not only memories for oneself to keep. Of course tourists come and go, so as such it is hard to differentiate one from the others. I didn't give it too much thought before if I ever impacted anyone, leaving meant that I would miss certain people, that's for sure, but most of the time I always thought that they would stay in a comfortable and familiar place, they could just go back to what they had done before I had been there. Never thought they would miss us too, but I guess we are that charming, haha