Okay. Here is my confession. I have a love and hate relationship with Oslob. And the reason I hated and loved it at the same time was the main reason we visited Oslob. What?! I know it's confusing but let me clarify further.
How to Go To Oslob
Oslob is a small town in the Souther part of Cebu, Philippines. A good 3 hours bus ride from the City. Head over the South Terminal and ride a Ceres Bus bound to Oslob. You can show the bus conductor the exact address of your destination so they would know where to drop you. There's an aircon and non-air conditioned bus. We picked the air conditioned for a more comfortable ride. The bus will directly pass the Brgy. Tan-awan of Oslob where the whale shark watching happens if that is where you going. In our case, we went down to our resort which was also located along the highway before we reached the whale shark destination.
Amazingly, this Southern part of Cebu has one of the most widely activities to offer. From laid back beach hopping to falls adventure or mountain hikes and heritage tour. I was blown away with what we have done for the few days that we stayed there. We were lucky to get a chance to experience one of each. But one of the things that put Oslob on the map of the most bucket listed location is the whale shark experience. This definitely boost the town's tourism. So forget the rest as this blog is intended for this specific activity. Do not worry because I will also blog everything we did in there for separate pages. Stay tuned.
Our first agenda in Oslob was of course the whale shark watching! And so we headed at Brgy. Tan-awan, Oslob early morning with a 15 minutes ride from our resort. We rented a van, which covered our whole day tour of the town. Mode of transportation at Oslob is either trike or habal-habal. When we reached the place, parking area was almost full, a lot of tourists were heading to the covered area where the briefing starts. Looking from afar, I saw a line of boats already encircling a certain part of the sea, around half kilometer from the shore and I knew at that instant that the most visited creatures of Oslob were in there. And I was like what is happening?! We paid the fee, which was P500.00 for this activity that includes life vest and goggles. The briefing room which was actually an open concreted space with roof was full of people. The place was hot and humid and noisy, I'm not sure if I heard everything that was told by the guide. So to save you on that situation, let me just repeat all the rules in case you experience the same:
1. No swimming 400m radius from the shark;
2. No touching or any interaction with the shark;
3. No sunblock to avoid chemicals that can harm the shark; (this should be known in advance as I know that almost everyone who will go to the beach will put a sunblock before leaving home or hotel, which includes us. Or require everyone to bath before dipping in the beach)
4. Stay with your designated boat.
This activity requires an underwater camera if you want it to be documented. If you don't have one, there were go pros for rent around the area which ranges to 500-1k. They will save the photos in your USB or cellphone's memory card once you return it.
Each boat is given 30 minutes to come and go. So around 20 minutes in the middle to experience what is needed. Though excited, I was a little hesitant. Once we came in the middle, we already saw the gentle giants below our boat. And my first reaction was WOW, they were huge! Our boat was maybe just 1/4 of the shark's size, can really fit into their mouth. Lol!
So the struggle begun. There were at least a dozen of boats with passengers of 8-10 docked in the center. Imagine having that lot of people below. It was chaos! There were uniformed guide around checking the activities. We went down to the water though not fully submerged because unfortunately, we didn't know how to swim and so we never removed our life jacket. Taking the photo of the whales was easy because they just did their thing caring less to what was happening around. But our photos with them was a different story. It was horrible and laughable. Hahaha! So i'm gonna show you the photos and dare you not to laugh. I swear you won't succeed!
Almost ;)
This is ladies and gentlemen are our best groupie shot. :D
It was difficult to a non swimmer like us. Those you see on the gram can only be done if you never wear a floater and let go of the boat. lol! This is the reality photos of almost 75% of the sharks visitors. I wonder how they laugh at us.
Everyone has a choice if they're gonna take a dip or not. Though I knew we looked stupid, I was glad I experienced it on hand.
It was tiring, I swear. Though I know our boat guide who holds the camera was the one more tired and maybe frustrated because he kept on instructing us to let go of the boat so he can take the perfect shot but we never let go . lol!
The sharks size was intimidating indeed. I felt them a lot of times beside me and it was quite a panic moments because I know I can fit well in their belly with still a lot of space for the others (this thinking was a little morbid, lol!) but they were as gentle as a baby. Those times when I felt them almost touched me, I was more worried for them thinking it might not good for them to be touched by a human.
This dude though. If only I can swim. :(
And here are my failed solo attempts to have a good photos with the sharks. Please don't laugh too much. :D
Until I got these not so perfect shot but had been enough for me. Thanks to the help of our guide who after a lot of failed attempts, asked his colleague to hold me so I can properly get a little deeper. :)
See that hand. What a savior.
Okay so here it is. I told you that I have a love and hate relationship with Oslob. This is because I am not proud of how I got this one "proud' moment photos with the sharks. Don't get me wrong, this encounter with the sharks was one of my travel highlights. And I was happy to experienced it. I don't want to be hypocrite and tell you not to do it when I did it at the first place, especially that I am in full knowledge that this has become the income generating of the town and a lot of people is dependent on this job. But it has became an eye opener to me. During those time, I was not fully aware of what it takes to get a photo opportunity with the sharks. Imagine feeding these sharks to lure them to stay on this place making them dependent on people when supposedly they should be far away from the shore. This is not supposed to be how they live. They are not in their natural habitat. And the environment was a chaos!
Though based on the updated blogs that I have read, the local government heard the sentiments of the people. There are improvements with how everything is done in Oslob. Boats are now limited including number of visitor to come at a time. Though the sharks are still given their meal in order to persuade them to come.
These are just my thoughts. There are other places where whale sharks move freely. People are the one coming to them, not the other way around. When you get a chance to travel and see the world in a new eye, you will learn to care with the planet more. You will have this new heart to have everything you see and experience preserve because you want your future children to experience it too. Let us leave our nature and other creatures of this planet on their natural state.
I really love Oslob and Oslob is not just about the whale sharks. It's more than that. As I have told you earlier, this Southern part of Cebu has a lot to offer. So I hope we can come with a goal to experience the rest of activities too, not only the gentle giant. Let us all be responsible visitors and support sustainable tourism.
x o x o
Faith
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