Where's Scott?

We’ve arranged for a shark dive with exotic, starting at 5am! We wake long before dawn, and Mabel’s cousin picks us up on his motorcycle. The dive’s an hour offshore, and we’re told dawn is the best time for shark spotting. The ocean floor is pretty barren, and the dive is almost uneventful, spotting just a shadow of one shark, and one devil ray on our ascent (dives can’t all be winners!). Seb and I have a nice breakfast, visit the i-cafe for some beers, and wander around the villages a bit. We pop into “La Dolce” for some more pork, and a few more beers, and then stop by the motorcycle taxi rank for yet more bognow (Visaya for “cold”) ones.

While we chat, a very drunk and boisterous local sitting at the next table takes an interest in us. “I run a cock fight today. Want go? I take you”. By this point we’re quite pickled ourselves, and we decide to further defer our return to Mabel and the house for a unsupervised excursion into the underworld of Malapascua. We jump on motorcycle taxis (Seb’s driven by our drunken teacher/cock-fight chief) and head out behind the village shacks to who-knows-where. I arrive at the arena (already buzzing with life) and Seb’s nowhere to be seen; after a few minutes he pops into view, a bit rattled and pale. Looks like our escort was drunker than even he realized, and Seb had to work at keeping the man’s bike upright and out of the barbed-wire fences!

We feel safer when we spot a few white faces in the crowd, and it’s not long before the fight begins. It’s short, and indecisive – apparently our drunk friend was too plastered to even run a cockfight, and the crowd quickly becomes disgusted and starts to head off to an alternate venue. The backup ring is dilapidated, and clearly hasn’t seen action in ages! As a few locals attempt to perform some basic repairs, some new discussions start on who’s going to fight. We spot our dive master, Ronillo, and he explains that Mabel’s been texting all over searching for Seb (we’ve been wandering the far side of the island all day, and without a working phone haven’t been able to tell her where we are). Seb borrows a phone to fire of a text, and we quiz Ronillo about how the fight works. Turns out Ronillo’s a bit of a whiz, and he picks a number of winners (and wins a tidy sum himself).

By the time all the fights are finished, the sun’s setting, and we don’t get back until after dark. Mabel’s (justifiably) furious at Seb, and Seb’s in the doghouse bigtime (not a safe place in the Philippines! ;).