Green Lagoon

Sometimes you make plans, get excited about them and then these plans are thwarted leaving you momentarily disapointed and discouraged. Well I had one of these experiences 1 1/2 weeks ago where we were invited to join some families on a small white beach island just north of us. Excited for the obvious reasons... white beach and new sand for me collection... and because we decided to take with us our family away from family, the Regodos'. We packed our BBQ along with yummy pork and other snacks, filled our backpacks with swimsuits and stopped off at McD's and picked up 15 orders of extra rice (you can't have a Filipino meal without rice and I forgot to cook some before we left). We were on our way.
Not long after we arrived at the spot where you take the boat to the island only to find that we were about 500php short ($10). Very frustrating since we weren't exactly in a location with bank machines available. So off we went to what we were told was a beach close by. Well... it was close by but not what I would define as a beach, more as a marsh with a swimming pool filled with chemical free water (the owner made a point of mentioning this many many times).

We got some charcoals lit and started to cook our lunch while the kids ran off the pent up energy from the 12 of us crammed into our car (got to love the lack of Filipino road laws, heehee). Lunch was cooked to perfection thanks to the Regodos family and the rest of the afternoon was spent exploring. I stayed pretty close to our bamboo cover with Madison but Ryan was able to find some sea friends while the kids spent the whole time with Nonoy (Edgar) in the pool (seriously, if he wasn't starting University I would hire him as my care provider, the kids LOVE him!). I think the most bizarre thing was the amount and size of the jelly fish just laying around stuck when the tide went out! There were dozens of jellies just dying!
Along with the jelly fish Ryan was able to find what looked like a puffer fish (deflated), an eel and some squid.

Another interesting thing was the picture Ryan took of the fish that died when the tied went out leaving them stuck in the fishing nets, poor guys, that's just got to be an awful way to go!

Thankfully, it ended up being a great day! The kids had a blast, Ryan explored and Madison was content for most of the day. Who knows what would have found us on the beach but I'm really glad the day turned out the way it did... it just saves us an excuse to get the Regodos' to the beach another time ;)