On Jan 7, 8:37*am, jeff wrote:
exotic. *i like that. *sorta like going fishing down in hyde county, nc,
except for the artesian spring and crowds. good to read your stuff again
john...keep at it.

jeff

On 1/7/2012 4:50 AM, john b wrote:









last Sunday I ventured out to one of my favorite local watering holes.
Not for imbibing but for watching.

Badjiogan is little Barangay, or neighborhood that is known for it's
beach. It has not white sand nor clear water, but, instead has cold
water. Cold springs. The country is littered with them. Hot springs too..

In the lot of a hotel that never got finished you can park and walk a
little row of shops selling this and that passing them by while you walk
to the beach. The closer you get to the beach the harder it is to walk.
Where the mangroves haven't grown lay the only spots of vacant ground
and they too, are occupied by shops which are called Sari-Sari stores
here. You have to watch where you walk. Roots and holes and rocks and such.

When you finally reach the black sand beach the Sari Sari stores give
way to waiting sheds or cottages as the bamboo and palm roofed picnic
shelters are called here. All are full. It's like a daylight tailgate
party where the whole family is invited. Where the shelters end is is
cold stream of water entering the sea. Fresh clear, clean, cold water in
spite of the many people washing and bathing in the half kilometer or so
upstream where it flows from the ground.

Why, it is truly an artesian spring, an underground river. Where is a
better place to put a table than to sit under the tropical sun and have
your feet in cold water. The water is under such pressure, as on many
mountainsides out in the province as the country is called there, where
they just drive pipes into the mountain and the water comes forth clear
and clean and cold - like the pipe on the path to the Snowbird in the
North Carolina High country - they have driven pipes right into the
seafloor, if it 'is' a seafloor being only a foot or so deep at high
tide. And the water comes forth clear and cold.

I like to sit there until I am parched under the sun and have a beer. I
bring my own. Cold beer can't be found unless you consider things cold
when only slightly cooler than the ambient temperature.

Now....think about the pipes. The water is not so clean out in the sea
and it's salty. Pipes gushing clear, clean, cold, fresh water. It's a
veritable all day wet t-shirt contest. The place of the mythical bathing
Amish maidens but the religion is different. Ponce de Leon's fountain of
youth but only in my dreams. Few are braless but all are worth looking at.

And it is quite the way to spend Sunday.

I pulled over and parked and had not got fifty yards before I was hailed
by a breathless young man. My bike is well known around here - there
being none other like it - and someone had seen my bike and ran to tell
Jerome who ran to see me. Jerome being the breathless young man before me.

Jerome is a fine young man, and age doesn't matter so much here until it
gets past my bedtime of around 8:30 or so, and he invites me over to his
place to drink some Tanduay. Tanaduay Rhum being a rather nice if
somewhat sweet - as all things are here - at the hefty price of a buck
fifty a bottle. It's been the ruin of many a poor boy.

I tell Jerome he's crazy to drink Tanduay at 11:30 in the morning and I
buy a couple of liters of San Miguel Pale Pilsen beer and we walk to his
place across the creek on fallen trees and through the bananas trees
until we are on the farm.

Jerome is drinking his with his brothers in law who speak as much
English as I do Swahili, so went spent our time mostly head nodding and
smiling and gesturing and toasting to things I didn't understand and
things they'll never understand. We enjoyed each others company there by
the fish pond. Yes, this 'is' about fishing.

The fish pond is about 15 feet by 30 feet. Pretty good by the standards
of damming up a drainage from a far away rice field and throwing in a
few talapia fingerlings who seem to survive quite well in a variety of
water conditions. Like carp.

One of the fellows brings out an eight inch stick with line wrapped
around it like kite string and has some worms in his hand. I stop him.
Miming a look at the hook, which appears to be a number 12 or so I also
mime the actions of sewing. Requesting thread.

Cock fighting here is a beloved sport and virtually everyone has a
rooster and it is nothing to try a find a few feathers on the ground.
Usually some pretty hackles.

So I whips up a fly, a quickie streamer that I know won't last more than
a few casts and take a cast. I didn't wet the fly first and it spent
most of it's time on the surface with the fish oblivious beneath and by
the time I had it in it was nice and wet but I never got a second cast.
Those boys took over and had a blast with their long swinging arm casts
and caught lunch during much laughter, rhum and beer.. Natural born fly
fishermen.

They cooked the fish. I don't eat fish. I went to the beach. End of story.

john
Kamusta!
Wow, flashbacks. 'Cept mine ended up with me waking in the morning,
half in and half out of a rice paddy.
Frank Reid