Cell Phone Coverage.

On this trip, I travel with the Ansel Adams crowd rather than the John Muir crowd; nature photographers who want to capture an aesthetic on film rather than naturalists seeking a deep spiritual connection with the wilderness. Of course most everyone has some degree of both but there are telling differences on one’s predilection. The trail to Minaret lake shadows Minaret Creek heading due west never losing line of sight with Mammoth mountain and the Devil’s Postpile area. Cell phone coverage was five bars at the top of the mountain while only one bar at the base. If you think that is a good thing, you fall in the aesthetic category. If you think that is a bad thing, you fall in the spiritualist category.

I’m not here to judge, just to tell a story. Now, I turned my cell phone off, for most of the trip anyway. I usually keep it on because I like to snap fast pictures while hiking. I hate stopping, taking the backpack off, pulling out the camera, setting up, putting it all away. Hiking requires psychological momentum especially when you are hauling an extra fifty pounds of gear on your back. I started with the phone on for fast pictures. The cell phone surprised me with its little notification dings continuing as we progressed up the trail. So I turned it off. No dings, no digital map, no GPS, no alarm, no messenger, no chat, no phone.

On the way back, I decided to break the moratorium for some fast pictures. Instead I found a barrage of messages. My son reports that Guera is foaming at the mouth, Maruka is acting weird, and the house stinks. That was twelve hours ago. My own mouth foams at the stupidity of my dogs for getting skunked for the fourth time. I don’t even finish reading his messages when I get a panicked phone call from my neighbor. Maruka keeps escaping somehow, the dog is overheating from the 107 degree Santa Ana heat in Escondido, and the dog is stinking up her house. I tell her to use the gate on the porch to keep Maruka from getting out of the house into my yard to escape into hers and I’ll send my son over there as soon as possible. My son’s idea of as soon as possible isn’t quite the same as mine. After accepting my request to get over to my house, he calls me back to tell me he went back to sleep and doesn’t want to go over until six at night when he has a car. I’m worried about the air conditioner not kicking on, my neighbor being traumatized, the stink of the house, and the general condition of the dogs. I persuade my reluctant son to uber over to the house.

So now I am in two places at once. I’m trying to manage my problems at home while enjoying the hike back to the car. I’ve disconnected. My pace has increased substantially. As my friend puts it, “Who put a battery in your ass?” I’ve been supercharged by a cell phone. If I had left my cell phone on, I would have disconnected from the trip twelve hours earlier. I would have preferred to keep my cell phone off, or at least in airplane mode. I really can’t do anything until I hike the eight miles out and drive the eight hours home. I’m not quite spiritual but when I go to the wilderness, I want to focus on the wilderness set of challenges and problems; not on the everyday set of challenges and problems. I think that is the point of going to the wilderness in the first place. It means trust in my support at home. It means a zen focus on the moment. Am I being responsive by managing a situation that needs my input? Which is more connected? I don’t think there is a bottom line.

Mosquitoes

Which is a nice segue into the problems. I did not prepare properly for mosquitoes. I tried to buy some Off at the convenience store but they only had the big cans. I didn’t think it was worth the extra weight so I passed on the opportunity. So I had to borrow repellent from my friend. When I borrow, I’m reluctant to abuse the use to the point of not using enough. I don’t think it would have much of a difference. I have no delusions about who is the predator and who is the prey. With all the standing water and the warming temperatures, hoards of hungry mosquitoes stalk their prey where ever he may walk. I’m killing three and four mosquitoes with one slap. Wiping under one arm with the other hand to get at skin I can’t see, I come up with an unknown number of rolled up mosquito carcasses. One flies into my nose, another into my eye, one into my macaroni, one into the boiling hot water on the burner. Some spots are worse than others but they seem to find me no matter where I go.

Its not the worst mosquito swarm I’ve ever encountered. On a bike trip that took me through Havre, Montana, I stopped in front of store for a food break. A cloud of mosquitoes surrounded me almost instantly and I pedaled away as fast. I’ve since heard from a transplanted Havrian, that Havre is known as mosquito hell. If hell hath levels, I would rate Alaska number one. From the east-west gravel road that winds through Denali, I hiked down into the braided Teklanika river basin. I remember worrying about bears but bears have nothing on the masses of underfed mosquitoes that could obscure a body within one. If I had stayed for longer than five minutes, my pale lifeless corpse would have been sucked dry. I don’t know animals can live there.

Once my friend told me he wouldn’t do the planned hike to Iceberg Lake because of his knee, I proffered a new plan to leave the next day. You have to understand the daily rhythms of the photographer. They set up the first shots at five in the morning to catch the ten minutes of mountain reflection, complain about the overhead lighting from the sun for the next twelve hours, then take another round of pictures at sunset to again catch the few moments of mountain reflection. The thought of spending twelve hours in my bivy to protect myself from mosquitoes in the surprisingly hot sun was way more spirituality than I wanted to absorb on one trip. I took every opportunity to slap at the mosquitoes in the presence of my friends to make sure they feel my pain.

I didn’t find out about the skunk until we already decided to hike out. I think I would have been crawling out of my skin if I had to worry about my house, my dogs, and my neighbor while mosquitoes sipped desperately at my boiling blood through the thin netting of my bivy.

Ansel Adams

I instantly recognized the Minarets and Mt. Whitney photographs from the Ansel Adams collection as shown on Google images. I took the very same shots of Whitney on the ride up. The profile of Whitney and the island, the lake, the spires of the Minarets haven’t changed in fifty or sixty years. Ansel Adams pioneered landscape photography. Without knowing it until I looked at his photos, I suppose I one of his students, at least one of the many second and third off, that venture into the wilderness to duplicate his seminal efforts.

Ansel Adams wrote that black and white expresses color better than color does. He took color photos. He liked black and white better. Our compositions of Whitney and the Minarets are all about the color. We took our pictures at sunset and sunrise to capture the reds and pinks and deep yellows captured by the peaks. It didn’t even occur to me to turn them into black and whites. I don’t know if Adamizing a photo forces you to compose the picture differently to bring out all the subtleties of grey. Or perhaps it forces the photographer to focus more on the composition more than the wow. If I don’t have to get up at five in the morning to get a stunning picture, consider me a convert.

Digital changed photography. Ansel Adams used actual film and photoshopped his pictures, so to speak, in the developing lab. If he practiced thoughtful composition, I practice trial and error. I take as many pictures as possible knowing one of them is bound to turn out well. I don’t know if I practice art or luck. The camera provides instant feedback on the composition so I can rearrange compositions over and over hoping to achieve a balance though I have trouble seeing the tiny screen with my very poor reading vision. My camera provides useful lighting feedback when I snap a picture which I use to adjust setting in overexposed areas. I can retake the same picture over and over until I get the exposure I want. If I had the patience, I could stitch together the different exposures to get balance light everywhere in the photo with post processing tools. The iPhones already have an automated setting for combining exposures. I know the better photographers find the compositions and work the equipment much better than I do. The latter is technical proficiency but great artists know their paints and techniques. Is that any different?

Art or not art? Is photography art? Is art something that has to be good to be considered the thing that it is? Ansel Adams seemed to think the former: “You make a picture, you don’t take it.” So is my digital photography art or trial and error? I take pictures of a flower or a mushroom or an interesting form or an interesting landscape. I pick out the best one and crop out the noise. Then, I let nature speak for herself. I don’t have an online following to please. In Ansel Adams terms, I am the two people in the photograph: the photographer and the viewer. I like being at both ends of the good pictures.

John Muir.

As much as I like to take the pictures, this is also a backpacking trip. My gear includes a whisper lite camp stove with canister of white fuel, bivy, mattress, sleeping bag, tarp, water purifier, ultra light pots and pans, a ultra-heavy ranger issued bear canister, clothes, a rain coat, aluminum walking sticks which double as tarp poles, inflatable pillow, camera, two lenses, tripod, extra batteries and memory, two energy bars, three freeze dried meals, a lighter, and a quart of water. I have difficulty starting the stove. The stove provides a tiny well for fuel to prime the element for smooth burning. The problem is that the fuel spills while attaching the fuel canister to the stove. I have more gas on my hands and the ground then on the stove. I half expect to go up in flames when I light it. The mattress has a leak so I’m basically sleeping directly on the ground. I’ve chosen a soft enough spot and cleared it of rocks to make due. Everything else does its job. I stay warm and sleep well in the bivy. No bears test the integrity of the canister.

We cover sixteen miles in two days climbing 2500 feet in altitude to almost ten thousand feet with fifty pounds of gear. The eight mile trip up the trail takes over seven hours. The trail saves the steepest grade for last. It’s a great feeling to climb over a small ice pack and a rock lip to finally see Lake Minaret poised in front of the largest Minaret. We choose a campsite at the edge of Lake Minaret in a great location to take, or is it make, pictures. The forecast suggests the overnight temperature would drop into the thirties. I stayed pretty warm; I doubt the temperature dropped any lower than the upper forties.

We have one knee-deep river crossing. I grimace in pain from wading through the ice cold water. I can’t imagine how people find any pleasure in jumping into ice cold water. The trail follows Minaret creek. Aside from mosquitoes, the creek has a beautiful cascades and many small waterfalls. Small trout hang suspended in the ever moving icy water. Wild flowers cover the landscape each making its own mini composition. I recognize Indian paintbrush, some variation of golden stars, lupines, shooting stars, something that resembles a poppy, at least four species of grass, purple tube flowers, red tube flowers, white bells and many more. I pick up on the strong sweet scent of sage. I find the plant, pick a few leaves, crush them, and inhale. I love that smell. I see a few mushrooms here and there, white shelf mushrooms growing out of damaged or dead trees. I’m surprised to see any at all at this elevation. The same trip back takes a little over four hours. But then again, I have a battery in my ass, so to speak.

Deep Dive

I love jumping into the ocean water here, even at the first light of dawn, so warm and pleasant. The current and chop reduce the visibility but I can still see other divers thirty or so feet off in the distance following their mooring ropes down to cut through the current to the relative stillness near the bottom. We do the same. Once past the mooring rope, we fin our way over the edge of the mount. The water temperature cools noticeably but not uncomfortably. The visibility is dimmed by the depth and the thick thunder clouds to the east, obscuring the morning sun. But I think to myself, its appropriate for giant sharks to emerge from the shadowy depths.

The thresher obliges, coming up out of its shadowy depths as scripted, swimming towards us, then turning to profile modeling its long flowing tail and then away, the long tail waving its goodbye like an undulating banner in the wind. I kneel behind a rope on a sandy ledge off the mount at thirty meters; the rope placed so that divers don’t spook off the sharks. Another thresher emerges from the shadows. I look into its black plate eye. I don’t see the cold lifeless eyes reported by Quint, the charismatic and quirky captain from the movie “Jaws”. Instead, I see the look of bewilderment. Maybe because its small mouth hangs open. But that is my anthropomorphism. Inside, I think maybe its smiling because the mount serves as a wrasse cleaning station or because it is satiated after a long night of killing. The second shark turns away and disappears into the shadows.

The dive master gives me a nitrogen narcosis test. I’m not feeling loopy and he later tells me, I have good nitrogen tolerance based on his finger test. I attribute my tolerance to a lifetime of thinking under the influence of alcohol. No more sharks appear on the depth-shortened visit. We ascend cautiously by self-imposed switchback along the wall of the mount to let the nitrogen exit the blood leaving the shark infested waters safely and nitrogen bubble free.

  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1o0rGoQEjPjs6guhSuvOHkTebHjh1OOkv

Out of Sorts

The current is strong. I grab the guide line before it drifts out of reach. The mask is digging painfully into my forehead. I try to adjust it. I think I make it worse. I’m not breathing too well either. I have some sinus congestion, I think. The masks digs deeper and deeper into my forehead from pressure as we descend. I take the mask off, adjust it, put it back on, wasting a lot of air trying to clear the mask. I’m struggling against the current. The dive master is trying to point something out with his stainless steel rod. I try to look, but I’m too distracted by the equipment. I’ve already burnt through half a tank before I’m sort of at ease even thought the damn mask continues to burrow into my forehead.

The dive master searches for a miniature seahorse that matches the exact purple of the fan. I have to look really close because the wriggling thing is so small but I can’t really see it clearly without my reading glasses. I’m fighting the current and I’m already running out of air. We ascend, take our five minute recovery, and back onto the boat. I’m totally frustrated at the twenty minute dive. Tanya says she can see the red mark on my forehead left by the troublesome mask. She’s a marine biologist so comfortable in the water she could probably stay down for two hours on what I just burned up in twenty minutes. We aren’t designed for this environment and when the equipment doesn’t work right, its an unpleasant experience.

Recovery

I try another dive (and then another). I can’t go out on a bad note. Breathe in, breath out. It’s not a mantra. It’s life and death. It’s focus. It’s calm down or burn down your air supply in another frustrating twenty minute dive. With a better mask, a clearer head, and no current, I feel a thousand times better than before.

At twenty meters, I’m able to take in the environment and scenery: puffer fish, lion fish, a mantis shrimp scurrying along the sand at the base of a sea wall before diving in for cover, a cave with thousands of little fish floating in the entrance and a white frog fish hanging upside down from the ceiling, corals, urchins, star fish, a pipe fish, a miniature seahorse that I can barely see, a centipede looking thing in the coral, a nudibranch that saturates a bright blue and orange in the dive master’s torch. Without the torch, the colors don’t pop because of the depth and the cloud cover. I’m relaxed this time so the air supply lasts much longer. The dive ends with the five minute safety stop at the end of the dive flag. Satisfaction trumps frustration every time.

My choices of motorbike underwhelm. I like the idea of the semi-automatic but it fails the test drive, the shifting down requires a heel movement that I’m not accustomed to and the brakes feel loose. Kimdy, my insider shopping guide, just shakes her head disapprovingly at the thought of this sad bike. So I must choose between one of three fossil bikes: a Hondadon, a Yamadactyl, or a Mitsubishisaurus. The Mitsubishisaurus has the most comfortable looking seat and the least amount of fossilization. It passes the test drive: it has good brakes and decent acceleration. As a bonus, the fuel tank is a quarter full. I make my choice.

I figure I might as well fill up the tank since there is a gas station on the corner. I head into the Cebu City traffic, an insanity all of its own. I quickly realize (relative to the totality of the trip because I should have known better before I drove away from the shop) that the gas gauge, speedometer, odometer, and turn signal don’t work. But why would I need those luxuries? Who needs a gas gauge on a two hundred kilometer drive or a speedometer reading around mountain curves or a turn signal to turn when traffic flanks me within inches on all sides? The failed odometer indicates that the bike died at 31,000 kilometers. I drive the fossilized remains. The bike makes some weird clicking noise every time I hit the rear brake and sometimes when I just slow down. It backfires more than a cabbage-stuffed colon.

When I finally return the bike, the under carriage has separated from the frame and the right foot well has developed a rather large crack in the black plastic. The Filipino boy manning the counter at the bike shop threatens me with my deposit and passport. I plead my case that I did NO damage to that bike. I didn’t. I am only guilty of foolishly taking an already dead bike on a half-island tour of Cebu. When he finally releases my deposit and passport, I beat a hasty retreat out of the store and disappear around a corner as fast as I can. I’m sure the Mitsubishisaurus is ready to crumble into the sands of time at any moment.

But back to the trip. The helmet on my head won’t save me when I venture into oncoming traffic and a lane-filling twelve foot high green bus closes while I try to gun my way around an eighteen wheel black smoke belching truck with ten feet of overhanging rebar hanging out the end of the trailer ready to gouge out the eyes of the unwary. My Kevlar motorcycle pants probably won’t save me either when a dog, or a kid in his school uniform, or a motorbike taxi, or a rooster, or a pedestrian or an oncoming scooter venture into my path. Fishmonger Mike, the appellation referring to his fish-packing business that earned him his millions, ended up in a day long coma and a multi-month recovery when a dog veered into the path of his bike. He doesn’t remember it; the account he tells is second hand.

And that is the problem. Damn the rules and the regulations of the road if it impedes one’s progress. Yet, it all seems to work until it doesn’t. If you are hit, if you are down, who comes to your rescue? Some half-starved hound looking for scraps? One taxi driver asks me “What do we do, just kill them all and start over. Just leave two.” Adam and Eve jump start Cebu for driver safety. I offer something less apocalyptic, like segregating the traffic: vendors, dogs, bicycles, pedestrians, scooters, motorcycles, cars, massive buses, and twenty-two wheel truck trailers shouldn’t try to occupy the same space. In Cebu City, at least, they enforce the helmet law.

Cameron, the flamboyant English dive shop manager and part owner of the Cebu Dive Shop, advises me to watch out for three things: dogs, dickheads, and drunks. He calls me daredevil Mike. I like Cameron, when I first checked in to his Cebu Dive Shop, he spots me a beer. I probably had that look: my hair gets all windblown helmet-shaped crazy, I’m coughing up a lung from all the roadside burning and overall shit air quality, and have a weird red and black glow from sun, heat, and the black soot of vehicle exhaust. Several times I see a truck or a bus crank into gear with a plume of black exhaust scattering roadside pedestrians who quickly avert their heads and cover their noses with the inside of their elbows.

I wonder if by dickheads, Cameron means turning a corner and seeing a completely tanned, full grown naked man without the slightest pretense of modesty walking towards oncoming traffic. Once is an anomaly. Two times is weird. Three times signals the beginning of a coming apocalypse. The crazed naked men coming down from the hills and out of the jungle dining on motorists and uniformed school children with backpacks and street dogs. Maybe they have come for the women? I think their approach is too aggressive to take on women given their naked vulnerability. I see a B movie in there somewhere. KimmyDy, my travel analyst, later suggests that they are touched. Maybe Bellevue isn’t such a bad idea after all. I quickly slip by the naked men, each time wondering if I really just saw that.

The next man standing in front of me is a PNP officer at a check point, the guys that stand on the side of the road with rifles rather than enforcing traffic laws. “License and registration please.” “This is a rental, I don’t have a registration.” “You have to have a registration. Where is your registration?” “I don’t have a registration, this is a rental.” “Did you steal this bike?” “No, it’s a rental.” Like Abbott and Costello. Mark, son of my neighbor, later suggests that the registration was probably under the seat. OK. I guess that might have been useful information at the time, but on the other hand, given the state of the Mitsubishisaurus, it probably was a stolen bike after all. “Where is your Filipino driver’s license?” “I have an American license.” “You need a Filipino driver’s license.” “My American license is good to drive here.” “You need a Filipino driver’s license” “I have an American driver’s license. It should be good.” “You need a Filipino driver’s license.” I don’t. I know I don’t. The internet is never wrong. I wonder if I am getting a shake down. Do I have to pull out a few pesos? Shit. What’s this gonna cost. He relents, stands aside, and waves me through. I waste no time taking off and don’t look back.

I should have done a better job of getting directions to the dive shop. It’s not right in Moalboal. I see a sign pointing to beach resorts in 5 kilometers and figure that is where I would put a dive shop. I turn and pull into a gas station to confirm. The two kid attendants have no idea what I’m asking for. Another man just points down the road in the direction I am heading. I drive down a couple of kilometers stopping at a fork in the road. Remember, I have no odometer. I stop and ask a gruff Filipino man on a motorbike. He grunts authoritatively and points his hand stiffly towards the ground waggling his wrist indicating I should continue to the left. A couple of kilometers later, I run out of road. Five dirt roads each lead to private beach resorts, none of which are named Cebu dive shop. I double back past the fork and pull into a resort. This time, a young Filippino man sitting on his bike in the driveway with his daughter playing on the gas tank gives fairly explicit instructions. I backtrack a kilometer, find a turnoff with the resort sign as predicted by the man, take the road past the resort to Panagsama Beach, also accurately predicted by the kind man. Arrival! I find the Cebu Dive shop.

I have similar problems returning to Cebu City. On the downside, I am completely lost. On the upside, I see at least three of the land marks a web site had suggested to see while touring Cebu City including: a market, the Capitol building, and the oldest church in Cebu. I’ve learned from earlier trips not to rely on map apps as they have a tendency to disappear at inconvenient times, so I now take a screen shot of the maps when I do my research. The problem with my approach is twofold: I didn’t capture enough detail and none of the streets have signs on them anyway. Clearly, people in Cebu City navigate by word of mouth. I pulled into another gas station and again, the teen attendants don’t have a clue. But a very kind gentlemen in a green and black motorcycle jacket overhears my request, and tells me to follow him on his bike. I finally recognize a landmark and find the bike store for return. Thank you kind sir! Two for the kindness of strangers.

Which brings me back to Cameron and the free beer. The dive shop is also an outdoor bar. After straightening out my crazed hair, cleaning up a bit, and retrieving my beer, I meet Vanessa and Francesco, my Spanish dive masters for the next day’s dive and have a good time chatting with other divers at the bar learning about the dives, their trips, and general background. After a night in my air conditioned one-room hut, Vanessa and Francesco lead me and another dive couple over the rocky shore for our walk-in dive to see the sardine shoals. The sardines number in the millions. Although the visibility is poor due to the churn of wind and wave, it presents no problems. I rise up in the middle of the bait ball, the sardines parting way in a toroid about me. I see a few barracuda’s hanging just outside the skin of the bait ball, but nothing is dive bombing the bait ball like I’ve seen in nature videos. Something spooks the sardines producing a brief current of equispaced darting sardines that perfectly maintain the boundaries of the toroid. After things calm down and I’m under the bait ball again instead of inside it, I join a sardine side current, trailing a foot behind a strand of sardines that keep an exact distance from me.

Since this is an out and back dive, I signal the half way point on the my air. Vanessa gives me the OK but we don’t head back. At about 70 psi, I start wondering if I have enough air. I signal to Francesco. The OK sign comes back. At about 50 psi, the you better end the dive mark, Francesco offers me his spare yellow regulator. I swim back with him to the entry point on his regulator on his air. I go back to my own regulator for the three minute safety decompression before heading the thirty feet to shore. The other two divers come back with Vanessa about ten minutes later. Apparently, I am a heavy breather. Pervert! But that is another story.

I dive Pescador Island in the afternoon with a group of more experienced divers and a different dive master. Cameron appoints Vanessa to watch over me personally because I am heavy breather. If necessary, she can guide me back to the boat without forcing the other divers to prematurely terminate their dive. The island is basically a cylinder that extends down some 40 or 50 meters. We dive 25 meters give or take, my deepest dive ever; hey, I’m a hobby diver not a serious one. The beautiful dive features a terrific assortment of corals and reef fish. The oddest fish is a chalky white bass sized fish that sits on a chalky coral matching it in color and texture. (A subsequent search reveals that it is the very interesting, color-changing, frogfish http://aquamarinediscovery.blogspot.com/2009/04/frogfish.html). Again, as my air runs low, I end the dive but at least two other divers have to come up at the same time, including Sarah, an absolutely stunning Swiss woman with perfect breasts in a blue knit bikini top. Like I said, I’m a heavy breather. Pervert! I try desperately not to obviously stare even behind my dark sun glasses but I think a woman always knows.

As the boat bounces in the increasing swells and thoughtfully sprays Sarah with more water droplets on her soft skin, I tell her about my plan for diving with whale sharks at Oslob. She informs me that she is against Oslob for environmental reasons. The sharks stay because the fishermen feed them, disrupting their natural migration and potentially shortening their lives. I told her I wasn’t savvy on the controversy until now. Somewhere in there, she drops the H word. A woman always knows! It didn’t change my breathing patterns any though.

So, it turns out later, that Sarah’s description is fairly accurate. In the scheme of things, Filipino making an industry out of two whale sharks pales in comparison to the decimation of fish species on the planet by commercial fishing operations. Despite Sarah’s concerns, I am going to dive with the sharks. I’m glad I booked my tour in

Oslob at the Casa Bonita II, a local hotel despite having to get up at 5:30 am in the morning. Our hotel group, three Canadians, a Brazillion youth circumnavigating the planet in forty days, a French couple and myself, snorkel in the first group of canoes out, beating the crowds and pandemonium to follow. The oversee-ers of this operation orchestrate the viewing sessions and times to process thousands of people a day. I did not touch the whale shark as instructed wanting to avoid the six month prison sentence and fines but the whale shark touched me, literally. I’m not pressing charges though. The whale shark is doing its prison time in its own way, the whole operation an outdoor third-world version of Sea World. I’m sure, in thousands of people, as Sarah suggests, some bozos try to ride the whale shark tail amidst the chaos of kicking fins and ocean currents.

I enjoy the experience though I don’t find swimming with large fish life-altering. I think crashing on a steep rain-soaked cement grade, spending time in Filipino prison, begging for money because of a lost or stolen wallet, spending days at the embassy trying to replace a passport, or an attach of sun-drenched naked men, might qualify as life altering (if not life ending) events. Isn’t that the vulnerability of traveling alone in a third world country with no support system? I have to remember the good too: scootering through mountains and along ocean-lined roads by mangroves, having a good experience in the dive shop trading dive stories, diving the sardines and the island, snorkeling with whales, hiking to a beautiful waterfall, and getting help from people when I needed it.

Mark says, “It was pretty gutsy.” Kimdy says, “I’m glad you made it back alive.” I for one couldn’t agree with her more.

P.S. Images of Cebu City, PNP Officers, Baitball, and Frogfish were borrowedfrom Google.