Shark Tale

(Travel Log: Saipan — Pau Pau Beach)

Living in Manila has its perks…once in a while you’ll get to witness stick ups (back there we call it hold-up or holdap), or in my personal experience -- even a straight-from-the-movies-like-kidnapping complete with goons and guns sort of thing right at your very eyes, or having your bag snatched away with you still clutching on it for dear life as if it contains more than a compact powder and a cell that is actually already screaming to be replaced. Pretty action packed if you ask me.

On Saipan, let me see… other than some rather rickety old metals scraped together as a sad excuse for an octopus ride at the Liberation carnival being put up every year…there's not much around here to threaten your peace of mind. Not that I’m complaining.

Well except that one time at Pau Pau beach, however, where we used to spend our Fridays night swimming.

That day after a scrumptious dinner of carbonara that a friend made for the occassion with matching grilled chicken from Cost Co. (which never disappoints), we jumped to the water and snorkeled the time away happily until quite late. 

The beach that night seems to have come straight from Japanese volcanic hot springs. It was a beautiful moonlit evening. The water was crisp and luxuriously warm, a more than welcome respite to soak the worries of the week away.

At about nine in the evening, there were only three of us left swimming in the dark. The rest were playing Bingo under a lamp light and the smiling full moon. We were having a laugh and a few giggles here and there (you know the usual sound girls make when they think no one else are within earshot) when one of my companions suddenly pointed something out in the sea asking what it was. I heard the urgency in her voice and when I turned to look, I saw something swooshed not far away from us making half a circle as it comes towards where we were. My mind went double time with thoughts of tsunamis, or humongous reptiles expecting to come any second to swallow us whole. Talk about paranoia on crack! But anyway, I heard myself scream and tried to run as fast as I can with my friends not far behind.

My whatever-that-is-spotter friend and I managed to reach safety of land first, but our other poor buddy had stumbled on her way and was crying for help. Despite fear for dear life, I had no choice but to ran back and help her up silently praying that whatever it was doesn't come yet to tear our limbs apart. When we finally reached shore again, we saw that she was sporting two scraped knees and a mantra to never swim in the beach at night ever again. Panting beyond relief, the three of us stood on the shore scanning the beach looking for any signs of whatever it was that we saw.  Looking back, I could just imagine how comical we must have looked.

Yet, I didn’t know I was actually scared until I started shaking. But lo and behold, the scare wasn't over yet because the same friend who spotted the "thing" suddenly pointed out to the sea towards a slipper she left at her haste. It was floating quietly by itself and we all helplessly stared at it.

I didn't want to go back, to hell with the slipper, I thought. To my consternation, my friend insisted to get it. Loyalty won over good sense so together we huddled like conjoined triplets, went back in the water to retrieve it.

It had developed into a running joke afterwards when everyone else learned about it, until I heard some news of a shark attack in Hawaii where a surfer disappeared leaving his surf board behind with a huge shark bite as a tell tale sign of what had happened and I realized how it could have been really serious for us as well. 

There are indeed sharks in these waters. I know it couldn't have been very big but it’s big enough to create a huge swish and scare the hell out of us and I’m sure am not a very easy person to scare. 

Musing over what happened now though makes me wanna laugh. Anyway I’d probably still prefer to go swimming at night in Pau Pau rather than ride that piece of junk at the festival again. I’d much rather pick the adventure over an accident waiting to happen anytime.

Originally published at my Friendster sCUTEzophrenia blog on July 1, 2007