Swimming with Whale Sharks

The one thing I knew I for sure wanted to do in The Philippines was swim with whale sharks. It was also, for some bizarre reason, the only thing I really didn’t put any effort at all into planning. I knew that the town was near a place called Legaspi so I flew there. That’s pretty much all I knew.

The rough plan was to take a bus to nearby Donsol after my flight, stay a couple nights and try to find people to share a boat with. The reality was that my flight was delayed by four hours so I couldn’t get to Donsol until the following morning and by that time people were already out on their boats. I had to fork over loads for a bus to take me to Donsol and then had to hire a boat myself which cost me another small fortune.

I would have been pretty annoyed if I didn’t manage to see any sharks but it turned out that I saw 12 of them. Because I had my own boat I had the sharks to myself in some cases. It was nice to swim with them without having to worry about being kicked in the head by someone’s flippers.

It’s hard to describe how amazing it was swimming with these huge beasties so I’ll just say it kicked ass and if you ever get a chance to do it, make sure you do. It was pretty cool.

Afterwards I headed back to the city I was staying in and got a little tour around courtesy of my bus driver. He invited me to his house where his sisters had a little stall set up selling two products: a traditional noodle type dish that I forget the name of and hot dogs. I opted for the noodles.

All up it was a great day and swimming with whale sharks is one of the best things I’ve ever done.