Time is running out

Nothing lasts forever, and the Captain’s last day in Sabang Beach is approaching. We did some more diving today and to top it all off, we were going to one of the best places, called the Canyons.
The sea was a little rough, but when the moon, sun and wind were taking into account, and with that information the dive masters could easily predict the currents at the dive site. It was Troy who was going to take us, yeah…
So after his shouting at the boat men, the divers and cursing a little for himself, we could finally go down. It was supposed to be a slight drift dive towards the site, but we ended up fighting the current for an entire 40 minutes. I felt like I was participating in the qualification for the Olympics 2016, now and then we actually moved more backwards than forward. Fun dive? When we finally arrived to the site, I was so out of breath and low on air that I didn’t even bother to turn on the camera and look around. I let the other guys have a few minutes and then signaled to Troy that I was low on air and we should start the ascend.
He started swimming toward the next area we were going to check out, but once we stuck our heads up, we got a huge push of water current right in the face. We had to abort and went up.
Of course Troy wasn’t the person who was going to admit he might have been wrong, so he said the swimming wasn’t so bad and he had no problems… Yeah right, but who cares, none of us saw anything nor did we enjoy the dive. Who are the customers again? He could have planned this scenario and had a backup plan ready. Then we could have gone with the current instead and explored an alternative dive site. But it was a good workout for sure, need more of that, haha. Learn from the best, and from the worst too.

In the Philippines what we have experienced so far, the beers come with a napkin wrapped around the head of the bottle. The reason for this was not yet clear, but we did notice that most of the bottles had some residue that could be cleaned away. I think we got the explanation today.
When we returned from the dive, The Big Apple had gotten refills on their beer supply. They were blaming us for having emptied their stock, neither of us remembered anything, so that might be true then, haha.

In the afternoon, we had an appointment with the massage girls, one last massage. They stopped by before dinner and Rachel had done my laundry as well, smelled great! They had also bought a present for each of us, a new t-shirt that said, I <3 Puerto Galera, that was really nice of them. It was white, so I guess I won’t get away with staying in Asia in only dark t-shirts this time? Haha.
Joan was a little moody, she said we had been very nice and funny guys and she was sad we were leaving already. This was the second time now she had mentioned it, she really seemed a little depressed.

We had to do a tour around the village to say hi and goodbye to all the people we had met during our stay here. It was quite interesting to think about how coincidental some of the encounters had been, but nevertheless new friendships had been made across culture, religion and distance. 

We went to the Pirate Bar to have a drink, they had bought some fruits we had talked about earlier that week, the little lime kind of fruit, called Calamansi and the much bigger Pomelograpefruit. We had a few drinks there before heading back to find a place for dinner.

We decided to stop by some of the alternative discos we had learned about the hard way the last couple of days. There was a quite relaxed attitude toward us, compared to the first time we had been the places, seems like we were no longer fresh meat, haha.

For people sitting at home on the patio with a drink in the hand reading this, you might be looking at the situation saying that “Come on, all they want is your money, not your friendship”. I say you are entitled to your opinion, but I know better. Meet new people with an open mind, and then be critical – if you do the opposite, you might as well stay at home watching the National Geographic or Travel Channel instead.
I have noticed this when traveling, that if staying in one place more than a week and being somewhat of a habitual person, you will meet the same people all the time and eventually you change status as a random tourist to something else, maybe even a friend if you are lucky. Not talking about other tourists, but when you start getting to know local people and they stop treating you like someone they will never see again, that is when things start to get really interesting.
The Captain’s time was up and he had to leave Sabang and the Philippines. I followed him to the ferry, which is still a funny name for that wooden structure of a boat, held together by nylon string and paint. Not sure if he went into an argument with the existing Captain, but they seemed to have come to an agreement pretty fast, because minutes later the boat left. The Captain had left McSmarte all alone…