Shelling in Palawan by George Sangiouloglou (Greece)
I have been a lover of the sea and marine life for as long as I can remember. I began snorkeling in 1951 at the age of 12. Then I spent all my free time in the sea collecting shells, fishing and discovering the marine life. For the last years, as I have now again a lot of free time, I use to travel to tropical islands and seas for new experiences. I like to share the experience of my last shelling trip in Palawan. The reason that I choosed Palawan is because it is closer to the China Sea and I was expecting to find some different shells.
I arrived with my wife Angelica on 4 April 99 at the airport of Puerto Princesa, the capital city of Palawan. There waited for us Roger Van Den Berghe, my friend shell lover and cypraea collector, the owner of Princessa Holiday Resort. After driving one and a half hour South to Aborlan we arrived at Princessa Holiday Resort. The first impression of the resort was very nice, it is located in a quite bay, has a wide white sandy beach with nice bungalows.
Even though I was tired from the travel, I could not resist to walk on the beach a matter of testing the shelling and beachcombing. And it was good as the tide was low. I found Oliva oliva longispira Bridgman, 1906, Terebra sp. live in the sand. The next morning the bancas of the resort waited for me early morning. Roger assured me that the Captain, suntanned Litto , knows very well the shelling places and the exact location for each kind of shell. The destination was Arena Island, a private island where PHR can bring their guests for snorkeling, 30 minutes Southbound from the resort. When we came close to Arena Island I saw that it is in the middle of a large coral reef and the waters go deep very smoothly. I realized that it was a very promising area for shelling.
I asked captain Litto to begin shelling from a place where I could find Ovula ovum. So we anchored about 500 m. from the coast in 5-6 m. depth among corals. I prepared my equipment and started snorkeling. What a surprise, just 5 min. from the bancas on soft coral were 2 Ovula ovum . Roger has any reason to trust Litto's knowledge of the sea. The bottom around the Island is very interesting and variable, in deeper parts it has colorful big corals.
To the direction of the Island the bottom is very variable. There are places with flat rocky bottom and dead corals under which you can find Cypraea arabica, Isabella, lynx, ovum, vitelus, etc. and sandy places with sea weeds and some small corals and dead corals, that is the place for Cypraea tigris which I found mostly in the side of corals and among sea weeds and some times under dead corals. Usually I found Cypraea tigris by pair, when I found one, I looked around and almost all the times there was another one.
In the same place I found under dead corals Conus magus , miles, striatus etc. Lambis lambis as well as Hippopus hippopus , Tridacna squamosa , and Lima orientalis which I did not collect. I took only photos. By digging the sand with palms, among corals, I found in the sand a very nice Voluta vespertilio . There are also places with a sandy bottom with lots of sea weeds but with few shells.
The result of the first shelling day was very good . The main shell that I found was Cypraea tigris (as I am Cypraea collector I give greater attention to collect them) and there are lots. They are small in size but very colorful and they show a big variation of colors from white to very dark. I continued shelling for the next two days in areas of Arena Island. The harvest of shells was also good.
On April 8 I tried to shell in another place. Captain Litto took me to a reef between Sombrero and Malonao Isl., 40 minutes Northbound from the resort. It was a large reef with colorful corals around and a very different surface. Frankly, I didn't expect to find many shells there. It is my opinion that the reefs are not good places for shelling. I found only two Cypraea tigris, some arabica, annulus, moneta and some others.
The 9th of April was relax day, on 10th April we went to Malonao Isl . 15 minutes away from Sobrero Isl. (I didn't try shelling in this Island as it has a fishing village and most probably the shells are collected by the local people). The Malonao Isl. is uninhabited as it is covered with mangrove trees. All around the island (which is much bigger than the Arena Isl.) is a large coral reef and the waters go deep very smoothly. The bottom has areas with colorful corals and areas with dead corals under which I found several Cypraea as arabica, carneola, isabella, talpa etc. Conus furvus (pinkish color with lines found only in Palawan), magus , monachus, omaria, ratus, scabriusculus etc. and many others. There are no places with sand, sea weeds and small corals so I found only one Cypraea tigris . The sea bottom to the direction of the mangroves trees was very shallow with sea weeds and it is impossible to go close.
The next day we went again to Malonao Isl. but in different coastal area. The shell harvest was also good just as the previous day. On April 12 we went again to Arena Isl. In a place with sand among corals I was digging with my palms and I found many different species of Terebra . I found also many shells as usual I tend to say now. In all places Captain Litto went snorkeling too and he collected shells for me.
As life is not only shelling I have to tell you that I really love the good foods. I can't close this short article without mentioning that the restaurant of Princessa Holiday Resort serves delicious food and I must give my congratulations to the cooks Benni, Roy, Rommel and Tongtong for the excellent and nice decorated sashimi, tanguigui, the soup from the strombus luhuanus, the garlic fried meat of Lambis and abalone that we collected as well and many others local delicious dishes. I must mention also all the staff that was so friendly, willing to help and very kind. Many thanks to Roger for his kind hospitality. I left Palawan on 14th April 99 very satisfied with the shells that I collected and with the best impressions and nice memories.
(From: http://www.george-shells.com/palawan.html)
Palawan by Adrea Mach
"Friendliness, delicious food and the palm-fringed Sulu Sea make exploring the Philippines' last frontier a stress-escapist's delight"
Just how many of life's most memorable experiences happen "by accident"? Some people say there's no such thing as coincidence. If that's so, well...then it was supposed to be.
Sitting here on the thatch-roofed, rattan and bamboo balcony, my forehead fried a crispy crimson after a day of island-hopping in traditional, colourful outrigger canoes, I sigh, gaze out through the V-trunked mango tree, past the latticework of coconut palms towards the sea, reflection on the past few days that almost didn't happen.
"This is a working vacation", I had warned my Manila travel agent, oblivious of the oxymoron, when I booked a promotion package for a new resort he wanted checked out. "OK, so long as I have email access." I agreed and headed for the nearest airport to escape Manila - that teeming, thick-aired, July-sultry city - for a few days respite before heading back to home base in Geneva where I work with the World Health Organization.
An hour and a half later, I deplaned in the small, spic-and-span air terminal of Puerto Princesa, capital city of Palawan. The island's name means "elongated" and that it is - stretching 400 km from northeast to southwest, but only about 40 km accross. This whole province, also called Palawan, is known as the Philippines' Last Frontier. And that it is also. Though sparsely populated, it compromises over 40 indigenous groups and linguistic dialects. One group in the south where I was headed - the Tau't Batu - were discovered only in 1978; that's how unexplored Palawan still is. An escapist's "paradise found".
Topographically, the island is mountainous, but not volcanic, and its highest peak, the 2086 m Mt. Mantalingajan, is about on a par with Switzerland's Rigi or Austria's "Hausberge" near Vienna. Arriving by boat during monsoon season (August - October) and seeing the silhouetted summits wreathed in blue-lavendar clouds, you might even mistake them for the Austrian Salzkammergut lake district which has its fair share of Schnurlregen, even snow flurries, in summer. But there the similarity ends. Palawan's mountains are covered, never with snow, but with lush tropical forests. Few trails or other signs of civilization. "Unspoiled " is the word for them.
Arriving in Puerto Princesa, I was immediately struck by two things. One was the neatness of this small city of 130,000 inhabitants which has won several prestigious global awards like the 1993 Earth Day Award for its environmental correctness. The second was the respectful warmth and consideration of the people which all but caught me off guard - even in this country "where Asia wears a smile".
They were disarmingly friendly from the first moment. Unfortunately, I wasn't - at least not when I discovered half an hour enroute to our resort that the south of Palawan has no telephones. "What? No telephone?! And therefor no email!" I railed when they told me about 20 km down the pothole-pockmarked main road south. I was aghast. How could I survive without email?! "Incredible! Unacceptable," I said, thinking of my email stacking up into the hundreds while I disappeared into pristine oblivion. "We'll have to go back to town and find another place."
Obediently, my driver Archie - who it turned out, was also the manager of this newly opened resort (which was on the top of the waiting list for modern day communications and meanwhile stayed efficiently in touch by walkie-talkie). We passed by various places, none of which combined the two things I yearned for: calm, pristine beaches and hi-tech communications. Finally, it dawned on me that I was behaving like the quintessential ugly info-era addict.
Embarrased, I conceded, "OK, let's try out your place over the weekend at least. Then I'll decide whether or not I can stay." And since the owner's coming as well, I can give him a piece of my mind, I thought. No email! Hrmmmph! Unheard of - conveniently forgetting that the world has existed for a fair number of centuries without this bane of personal freedom.
What followed was an excursion into the "real world" of Palawan. An hour's plus bone-jolting journey in our horn-honking van over the "zig-zag road" through lush vegetation and rice fields interspersed with small villages until we arrived at last at our destination. Surprise! A paradise-like oasis of a dozen or so thatched roof cottages converging around a spacious, immaculately clean pool, in the midst of a coconut grove beyond which was a 3-km stretch of pristine white-sand beach. Yes! I exulted. Am I ever glad I came!
No email indeed! A blessing in disguise. I got down to work, finished everything and sent it off on one day by way of Puerto Princesa office. And then...?
The days that followed were truly utopian, south-sea style. Dining in the open-air pavillion was a special pleasure and the food, an endless delight - a mixture of Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, European and "universal". Just name it. Breakfasting on the world's most delicious mangoes, honey-golden, juicy diced on the inside-out skin to stand up so many mini-soldiers. Meals were prepared with time and care - and came out beautiful to behold, each dish colour-orchestrated like a work of art. My favorites were the scrumptuous steamed prawns in chili and garlic sauce, the sushi-sashemi mackerel marinated in a mixture of vinegar, onions and ginger and, of course, the lobster. All this washed down with a chilled Chilean white wine. Yummm...
Two days into my epicurean adventures, the resort's Belgian owner turned up - well, not exactly; The legal owner is his Filipina wife, Tess. A former Volvo personnel chief, Roger was a delight with his witty, debonair presence. He had embarked twelve years before on a "second life" with Tess and bought the property in 1996. Originally, Princessa was meant not as a resort but as a family getaway from Manila. But, families being the big affairs they are in the Philippines, the place they bought with this in mind was actually built to accomodate 60 people! Five hectares of beach-front property and 500 coconut palms surrounding a spacious pool with grill area. This is not at all the sort of family week-end place you might find in Europe, I mused. Sixty people!
The tropical ambiance tends to mesmerize...and the big city stress just sloughs off like an outgrown snake's skin. Warm sea breeze, swaying palms around the pristine pool and the ever-present sound of the sea where we spent spaced-out hours collecting the most delicate assortment of shells - (names).
Perhaps the most vivid lasting impression - the one that brought me back to Princessa - was the next to last day when we went island-hopping on brightly painted outrigger canoes. Sitting on the prow, feeling like a cross between Kate Winslet in "Titanic" and Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast", we surged through the breaking waves, the gentle Sulu Sea dancing lively by on salt-fragrant southwesterlies. After picnic-lunching Arena Island, we wave-hopped to another islet for snorkeling and return at sunset, prickled by too much sun.
When at last I had to leave, I felt in fact as if I'd just really arrived. So is it any surprise for you to learn where I'm spending the last Christmas of this century? No? Yes!
Today as I write these words, it Christmas Day morning and, once again, as I sit on the graceful porch around my thatched-roof cottage looking out over the rolling sea - this time with my daughter, Chris - I am struck by how lovely and welcome it all is -and how there's clearly no such things as coincidence.
Adrea Mach is an American-born, widely travelled professional writer on international development and health issues, working with the World Health Organization. She is also a freelance journalist and author and has won several citations for her creative non-fiction writing.
(From: Palawan-SR Inflight Magazine)
