Subic Bay Adventures [Joshua Burke]

Subic Bay is located just above Manila on Luzon Island in the Philippines. The entire Subic Bay area used to be a U.S. military base. The U.S. military is now gone from the area (except for two navy oil tankers I saw on the Philippine navy docks and some sunken WW2 ships and ruined buildings) and now is a civilian city. We spent about a week there in the marina and we had enough time to do the three main attractions. 

One of the main attractions to do at Subic Bay is a zoo called zoobic safari.  Zoobic Safari is like any other zoo except that you ride in a truck with steel bars around it while tigers are eating raw meat and looking at you like you’re its' next meal.

The tiger trucks.

The zoo has all kinds of animals, but it mainly focuses on the tigers and reptiles. We went all around the zoo, mostly by motorized train, but we did walk around a bit. What I found interesting is that the zoo used old WW2 bunkers to house some of the animals. Resourceful, huh?

This particular bunker is used to house chickens and horses. 

The tigers have a pretty big area that they roam in and you can go into the fenced off area in a truck. Mom bought some raw chicken to feed them. When we were out a trainer fed the raw chicken to the tiger from inside the truck. The tiger started eating the chicken on the ground near the truck, but then it decided to jump on the roof. Luckily, there were bars on the Plexiglas roof so the tiger didn’t fall on us. It was really awesome seeing the tiger eat on the roof. Then another truck came alongside us to see the tiger and then the tiger jumped on the roof of their truck. As some people are scared of tigers, a couple people screamed in the other truck.

Feeding the tiger.  

The tiger on the roof. 

Ocean Adventure was, in my opinion, the best attraction. Aside from being able to interact with the dolphins, you also watched informational shows and learned about sea and land creatures.

When I mean interact with dolphins, I meant that I got to not only feed them, but also to ride them, pet them, and even dance with them! The dolphins they have here have all been rescued from dynamited reefs, or other sad catastrophes. Nala, the dolphin that we played with, had most of her hearing wiped out when her reef was dynamited.

Me riding on Nala.

It was fun playing with the dolphins and I learned a lot more about them. I have never been able to really touch a dolphin, much less ride them. It was an amazing experience that I will never forget.   

Besides the awesome dolphins, I also watched a sea lion show and a wild animal show. The animal show was pretty funny, but it was not the animals that were funny it was the humans!  Some Asians are very superstitious about snakes and some are scared to death of them...

One of the keepers said that they had lost one their snakes in a black backpack.  Some of the crowd started to panic, and one person even left! When the keepers found the backpack in front of a lady, they picked up the backpack and brought out a snake! The lady started screaming as loud as she could. She wouldn’t stop screaming until the keepers reassured her that it was a rubber snake! There’s more.

When the keepers brought out a python and asked for a volunteer to come up, a young lady came up. When the keepers asked her if she was scared of snakes, she said yes. So they said they would help her get over the fear. They first asked her to touch the python. She did so very cautiously. Then, they put the python around her neck. The lady was so scared that she started crying! I have never seen people so scared of snakes as the Filipino people! That along with the dolphins made my day.

The last attraction we did was the Treetop Adventure. As the name suggests, you do zip line related activities in the trees.

The first activity we did was a ride called the silver surfer. It was a two-person ride only, so Mom and me went together. The surfer is like a surfboard with handles and is elevated by two wires. A motor works it and you go zooming above the forest floor. It was a lot of fun. 

The canopy ride is where you go from tree platform to tree platform on chairs about 100 feet up from the ground. The chairs go slow and the ride was quite relaxing.

The repelling (more properly called the screaming descent) was my favorite ride even though it lasted 2 seconds. You go to the top of a 100-foot tall tree and put your harness on and get attached to a hook. Then without any warning you drop 99 feet down in 2 seconds. I couldn’t stop shaking till we were out of the park! 

Thanks For Reading!

Joshua    

Wow! 

Tubbataha Reef: Philippine’s Natural Wonder [Joshua Burke]

Tubbataha Reef is an amazing place. It is located in the Sulu Sea about a day sail from Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Philippines. Tubbataha Reef forms the apex of the coral triangle, the area with the largest coral species diversity on the world. The triangle extends as far as Borneo in the West and New Guinea in the East.

Checking out an overhang. 

Some christmas worms living near a piece of brain coral.

Because it was so unique, the Philippines named it a national park in the 1980’s. Then the world saw how unique it was and named it A UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) world heritage site in the 1990’s. The reef is also on the back of one of the Philippine bills.

Since it is a UNESCO site, Philippine rangers and Navy personel protect the reef area from over fishing and harmful fishing practices like dynamite and cyanide fishing. The only damage to the reef is when a typhoon comes through the area and breaks some coral or a wayward US minesweeper or Chinese freighter crashes into one of the atolls.

A beautiful sunset over an exposed part of the reef at low tide. 

We made good friends with the rangers and on the first day we got to watch a big fight at the Ranger Station (they had satellite TV) televised from Las Vegas. It was Mayweather (USA) vs. Manny “Pacman” (Philippines).  Manny is the most decorated Philippine fighter and the whole of the Philippines shut down to watch the fight. We were rooting for the home team. Whenever Manny hit Mayweather, all the rangers would gleefully yell and holler. It was quite funny. Unfortunately Manny lost and all the Philippine rangers were super upset. Luckily Dad and Mom brought a lot of cold beer from Princesa….

Watching the fight at with the rangers and some dive boat crew at the Ranger Station.

When we weren’t watching guys beat each other up, Jacob and I played volleyball with the net they had there. In the afternoon when it was low tide, a sand spit would surface and you could play on it. The rangers have built a volleyball net on the spit and Jacob and I had lots of fun playing volleyball.

Us on the sand spit with the ranger station in the background. 

One night we had smores over at the ranger building. Many of them said it was too sweet but one of the Rangers, Marc, loved them. I think he ate four! Since he liked them so much we left half of our smore supplies with him.

The diving here was astronomical. Even the snorkeling here was comparable to the diving. On one snorkel I saw two sharks! I have never seen sharks while snorkeling. And these were huge white-tips that got pretty close to me!

Like Layang Layang, the reefs at Tubbataha had walls that were sheer and went down to the ocean floor that is +2000 meters down. While diving I saw tons and tons of white-tip and black tip sharks. Surprisingly enough, most of them were babies about a foot long.

The drop off. 

A baby white tip.

You are also supposed to be able to see thresher sharks and tiger sharks, but I didn’t see any. Whale sharks are also a common sight here. Just a week before we arrived there was a sighting of one. Too bad we didn’t see that, it would have been awesome.

Me and mom on a dive.

Besides from all the sharks here, there are also many sea turtles. I saw about 2 turtles every dive I went on. The thing that surprised me the  most was that I didn’t see any mantas! It was really weird; usually you see lots of mantas when you go to a remote area like this.

A Hawksbill Turtle. 

Of course the fish and coral here were abundant. There were tons of triggerfish, parrotfish, unicorn fish, bug-eyed fish, wrasses, and clown fish. And that is just naming less then 1% of the fish we saw.

The sheer amount of fish...

A huge Maori Wrasse. 

Thanks to the Philippine Rangers, the local dive boats, and of course Dad and Mom for making Tubbataha reef such a fun experience!

Thanks for Reading!

And DFTBA!

Joshua

Wouldn't want to touch this animal.