International Living Postcards– your daily escape

Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Palawan, The Philippines

Dear International Living Reader,

In Maricaban Bay in Palawan, the Philippines, I saw more fascinating marine life in two hours than I had seen in the last 20 years. Snorkeling among a pristine coral garden, riotous in purples, reds, and umbers, I enjoyed the company of three species of starfish (red, white, and purple), giant clams with three-foot-wide mouths, sharks darting in search of prey, four resident green turtles browsing the grass, shoals of jackfish so thick they blocked the sun, octopus that morphed into different shapes and colors, barracudas, scorpion fish, lion fish, and many more colorful species unrecognizable to me.

“The largest giant clam off the beach is 150 years old,” Dirk Fahrenbach told me later. Fahrenbach, a German, owns the Dugong Dive Center at Club Paradise, an exclusive resort on a private isle in Maricaban Bay that enforced a ban on commercial fishing in the bay. Fahrenbach worked as a dive master in some of the world’s best scuba diving spots before he settled in Palawan. I asked him why he had come here: “The Sulu Sea has more than 500 marine species, and that’s the largest concentration of species found anywhere in the world. This is the best place for scuba diving.”

Discourse about Palawan is always characterized by the province’s natural or wilderness superlatives. The archipelago–Palawan province has more than 1,000 islands–is the fish basket of the Philippines, and has some of the largest tracts of mangrove forests found anywhere (118,000 acres).

Such natural diversity is enshrined in the epistemology of the name Palawan: the Chinese called it Palao-yu (land of beautiful safe harbor); the Hindus, Palavas (land of abundant plants); and the Spanish, Paragua (land of promise).

For the modern Filipinos, it’s the “Philippines’ last frontier”–Palawan is one of the most sparsely populated provinces and among the least developed in the Philippines.

Outside the provincial capital, Puerto Princesa, private cars are uncommon and there are only two stretches of paved road. In all towns, the traffic almost solely consists of tricycles (motorbikes with side cabbies for local transport).

It is these qualities that had whet our appetite to visit in the first place. Our adventure began as soon as we boarded the twin-otter plane in Manila”

Victor Borg
For International Living