Donsol, South Luzon, Philippines

We swam with the whale sharks! We swam with the whale sharks! These are the biggest fish in the world, but they only have tiny teeth to eat plankton and shrimp and maybe people toes and fingers, but not ours! They are all black with white spots, like a reverse dalmation, and can grow to 18 m long. Anyhow, they only surface in like 3 spots in the world, so we went to Donsol to go swimming. We saw one that was maybe 20 ft long, and it was about 3 ft below us. So cool! And the water was warm enough for Sara to jump in (too warm for Dave).

We also met a Filipino on the bus on the way there, who invited us to his gf's house to eat. It was fiesta time in the village, so they had slaughtered the pig and had TONS of food. Lots of pork. All very good! It's interesting, we've eaten a bunch of dishes over here that mainly revolve around the pork fat... cubes of pork fat, like the stuff you peel off the pork shoulder. We're amazed that they manage to stay so thin. But there aren't that many dishes that have the pork meat. Where does the pork meat go? Do they import pork fat?