Monday, January 7, 2013

Sightseeing in the Philippines: Swimming with Whale Sharks in Oslob

Anette 12:00:00 AM Animals, Fish, Philippines, Southeastasia, Travel

After having greeted the new year by relaxing on the beach in Mactan it was time for Yuma and I to begin our backpacking adventure. We had already bought a trip to Oslob south in Cebu where we had heard that it would be possible to see the great whale sharks, and because we wanted to leave for Bohol in the afternoon we had scheduled an early departure for Oslob with pick-up at the hotel at 3:30 am. The next three hours of the morning were spent sleeping in the car. Good thing the roads were relatively good, unlike the roads I experienced last year in Bolivia on my way to Salar de Uyuni..

We arrived in Oslob around 6:30 in the morning, and after a short briefing by our guide we were led down to the beach where a boat was prepared for us, I have to admit that I did wonder if we really would be able to see any whale sharks at all, but after leaving the shore it did not take many minutes before we could see the big creatures moving underneath us in the sea.

Whale sharks are huge, but they don't harm humans. Look at it, isn't it cute?? ^^

Me with one of the whale sharks

Yuma and a whale shark

While all the other tourists were using life vests Yuma and I had decided not to use them. This enabled us to dive down to the whale sharks and take better pictures of the fantastic fishes. As you can see on the pictures they are quite big! Good thing they don't pay any attention to us at all. There were four whale sharks swimming aroud the boats where the local guides were feeding them with small fish in order to keeping them in the area.

About an hour and a hundred pictures later it was time to go back to the shore, where we got brunch from our guide. Considering the price of the day trip was 5500 pesos I think the food was rather disappointing though,we only got two muffins each, a cookie and a can of juice. Oh well. They know how to get the biggest profit out of the tourists I suppose.
Still, the trip was great, and we both enjoyed swimming with the whale sharks.
I think that it was especially good we arrived early, as there were not that many tourist there during the first twenty minutes or so.

Did you know:
- The whale shark is neither a whale nor a shark, but in fact the world's largest fish!
- It can become 15 meters long and weigh up to 20 tonnes.
- If you want to swim with the whale sharks you should avoid touching them, as it might scare them away.

Greetings from Yuma and me^^

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All blogposts from the Philippines

Thank you for reading! Please feel free to leave any comments or questions below
- Anette

About Anette
Anette came to Japan as an exchange student in 2010, met the love of her life and got stuck. From her base in Tokyo she writes about her experiences as a full-time worker in Tokyo and about her travels in Japan and abroad. She's a free-spirited adventurer who enjoys both the great outdoors and her urban lifestyle.