donsol - the butanding experience

pricelist - no complain


the butanding registration office


mount mayon lurking in the background


the BIO, joseph


going after the shark


game over










the butanding from shadow to shadow


michael the kid

Butanding watch is not an effortless recreation - wake up at 530, breakfast at 630, walk to butanding centre to register. the centre is a stone's throw away from their resort - jolee resort which is ps1000 per room per nite, add ps80 for breakfast and ps100 for lunch(check out after lunch). the peak season is over - around jan to april, soon the whale shark watching season will be over; sometime end of may. the hotels around will close for the rest of the year until the season begins in nov. and donsol, a small village will be lulled into its slumber again. the whole place has only one restaurant in its downtown, selling pizzas, local food and such.

the centre opens at 710. they finish register at 8, watch a 10minute video about the butanding and the do's and dont's on whale shark watching, get a see-thru-bag for underwater camera, they head off to the ocean at 810.

Within the 1st half hour, they have their 1st sighting. whale watching boats, as many as a dozen of them, quickly gather around the area where the sighting is. and everybody gets very excited. the bio(butanding interaction officer - the guide) herds the people to one side of the boat, and when it's time, he shouts "jump!".

he jumps into the water equipped with snorkel and flippers. in a state of excitement, and no warming up to the this experience in the big-wide and powerful ocean, all he could see was the color of the water around him. then the bio takes hold of his hand and pull him along.... he lowers his head and there it is - the big and graceful thing, gliding ever so majestically below him. the boat quickly moves away from the spot, so not to disturb the butanding's rhythmic swim pattern.

Without life jacket, he cannot keep up with the BIO pulling him to where the happenings are. he gazes at the big thing underneath him, having an unperturbed gliding thru the turquoise water. unbelievably, at some point it's just within his reach. he reaches out his hand, wanting to touch it, the bio pulls him away; he's not suppose to do have any body contact with the shark. there's small, slim, long, white fishes swimming along the shark, going after the gill flaps... which filters ton of water per minute for the plankton, that's abundant in this area of the ocean.

he hangs on behind the shark, with the bio pulling him along, for about 5 minutes. feeling very tired breathing thru the mouthpiece and blow tube, constantly blowing water from the mouth piece, kicking those extended plastic limps awkwardly, he wants out... feeling the lungs going to collapse, gulping in sea water uncontrollably...panic, he takes out the mouth piece, pull the goggle away to have a deep breath thru his nostrils. the boat was a good 200m away, can he make it back? he flings his hand loose from the bio's grip, rips the snorkel up, throws his hands up, and yells, "enough, enough, let's go back to the boat......" the bio calms him down, "relax...RELAX....", after a few more gulps of water, struggling in the water, with a calmer mood, he makes it back to the boat. thank GOD.

The second sighting was a 10 minutes after the 1st, have not taken enough rest yet, let others have their chance.

The third sighting is after 2hrs of the 2nd. he's not fast enough to get prepared, miss jumping into the water, boat sailing away after dropping the people that are fast enough to jump in. in this game, timing is everything.

The 4th sighting was mere minutes afterward, he jumps into the right time with life jacket on. Face to face with the shark. its toothless mouth opens as wide as a oil barrel, as if waiting for him to put his head in. But it's a brief less than 1minute encounter. as he paddles madly with all the drag of the life jacket, trying to keep up with the shark, it disappears into the donsol water, just soon enough for him to admire the creature's graceful glide into the abyss of the ocean depth.

the last sighting; he jumps but sees nothing, not heading the right direction. the boat makes it back to shore after a solid 3 hours circling in the donsol water.

all 5 of them who come out for the whale-shark watching do have their fair share of close encounter with the sea giant swim-pet, even for those non-swimmers and not-so-good swimmers. michael, the kid, who says he's good simmer and diver, ends up with a pale face, after the 1st jump into the sea - the ocean is too much for this pool-swimmer, and he's overwhelmed, and dares not go into the water until the 4th sighting, where assisted by the bio, he says he sees the big shark below his gait when he's standing in the water, and when asked what color is the shark.

he says, "blue."

"sure or not, blue. it should be grey."

"i had my goggles knocked off, i saw with my naked eyes... it's blue."

well - they say he did not see the shark. but the boy insists he saw it.....

- seeing is believing, but how do you tell someone to believe or not believe what he sees? or for that matter what he thinks he sees?

watch youtube here