A day at the beach

Our Beach hut

On Wednesday we made an expedition to the Fort Ilocandia beach.  It is about 5 km from the University. There is a five star hotel and casino at the beach where the Chinese and Taiwanese tourists stay. So it has all the facilities including beach huts with karaoke machines and changing rooms and toilets!  The karaoke machine required pesos to run it but that didn't prevent it from being used. They need to up the price! Thankfully S had rented two huts - one without karaoke. Several students and staff from Northwestern University joined us for this outing.

Setting the net

We swam in the South China Sea.  There were relatively gentle waves and the water was warm - I could have stayed in forever and swimming was effortless because of the salt.  We were in over our heads within 5 meters of the shore.

I wonder what the students thought when they saw that Kathleen and I shared a changing space.  But the cubicles were in the process of being painted so it was helpful to have each other to hold clothes while the other was changing. Despite that, Kathleen did get some paint on her pants.

We enjoyed watching and helping a group of fisherman who set their net from outrigger canoes and then started to haul both ends in from the beach.  Apparently the net was 300 meters long.

Hauling in the catch

As a child S used to go the beach and help the fishermen haul in the net so she had all of us helping.  Not being aware of what we were doing, we all gathered on one end only and the rope broke.  Nobody seemed upset and one man swam out and reconnected it.  It took a good hour to haul in the net with all ages helping, but in the end there was a disappointingly small catch.  That was a lot of work for not much return.  I gather that sometimes it is much better but at least we had an education about hard work and teamwork.

Lunch in the beach hut

The students went on 4x4 dune buggy rides and sand-boarding after lunch, but Kathleen and I had had enough sun so we came back to the hotel and started  getting ready for the next stage of our journey.  We succeeded  in getting the paint off Kathleen's pants.