Dive Honeymoon!

Today we did 3 dives. Once in Tingo for invisible thresher sharks, and twice in Talima with its gargantuan sweetlips that Doods call thicklips, Mommy fatlips, and which I call bee-stung-lips just to be different. But the highlight of these dives didn’t happen underwater, it was a bellyaching laughing time back at the dive shop. And the topic? Honeymoon…

Tingo: At the proposed Tingo Marine Sanctuary, we shooed away hooka divers. These are illegal fishermen using compressor and cyanide for easy fish kill. Another dive boat Malambing was there with a bunch of spear fishing divers! For both concerns mommy called Junie Baring, chairman of Lapu-Lapu City FARMC to inform Junie of the situation. After that we dove for Threshers, finding none, we diverted our excitement in throwing off panggals in the drop-off. Panggals are fish traps with a big opening that tapers inward to a narrow hole, making easy entrance but impossible to exit.

For our second and third dives we went to Talima. At the wreck site, current was strong as always. In a show of superb buoyancy control (let me brag a bit), I made my way between narrow passages underneath the ship’s bow and on the bow itself, while looking down at huge sweetlips under gaps in the wooden planking. You will not believe seeing these mammoth residents after only two years of being declared a sanctuary. At that time, the area was a vast underwater sand and rubble! Now it’s teeming with marine life with elusive garden eels and a rare white gorgonian sea fan.

Back at the dive shop we talked about many things. And of all topics to be discussed, our talk was riveted on marriage, but the conversation sidestepped on a relevant but lighter subject - honeymoon…

Mommy finds it romantic and modern to be honeymooning in Europe but will settle for posh Shangrila in Mactan for budget constraints. Doods, apparently proud being a diver, wants to spend it at a dive spot like Nalusuan or Malapascua. And I know why: He wants diving all the time, be it a hundred feet underwater, or just in between two feet (between two legs!). Either way can be done at a dive resort. Nice choice!

But I found their choices boring. I want honeymooning with nature – and hike up the mountains with my bride, and make love under the stars and moonlight naked, on grass! I said we can play hide and seek, and catch me if you can, in the woods. The laughing started here and for some reason we can’t stop. Mommy said If I was the bride, I will divorce you right away!

Doods added that after the wedding (his bride wearing just a bikini!) they will dive with the threshers. And if his life is threatened, he will stab his wife and swim away. Then the wife will divorce him right away, if she’s still alive!

Mommy said that if she knew that was the groom’s idea, instead of the bridal car going to Capitol Parish for the wedding, she will make a stopover at the Hall of Justice… Doods asked Why, to have a civil wedding instead of church wedding? Mommy said No, to file for divorce right away! I said But you are still bleeding from thresher shark bites, you should drive directly to a hospital for treatment (although this sequence is illogical)!

With that comment we exploded in a laughing frenzy that made my stomach ache and my jaws stiffen! I can’t contain my laughter without stomping my feet and slapping my thighs! And the bridal car? The dive shop’s dependable MULTICAB! How romantic!!!

If nothing else, this crazy discourse on honeymoon is better than seeing a thresher shark on a dive!