Agutayan Island
Jil Wrinkle and his fiance, Epril, invited us to join them on a trip to Agutayan Island, off Jasaan, Misamis Oriental. On July 27, 2008, Marissa and I joined them, along with another expat American Michael Bird, and his wife.
The theory was that someone we knew from Jasaan had a fishing boat that would ferry us to and back from the island for the day, but in practice we went to Jampason Beach Resort & Restaurant, which for PHP 800 would take us on a round trip to Agutayan Island.
What ended up happening was that since there were 13 of us, we decided to splurge and take two boats rather than just one boat, even though we were told one boat had a capacity of 20 people.
What is the capacity of a jeepney in The Philippines? One more than how many are already on it. I’ve seen jeepneys with 20 people on the roof and 5 or 6 more hanging onto the back and sides. There was no way to tell how many were inside.
The above images is from Google Earth. The island itself appears to be about 1 km long, North to South and about 500 meters wide, but actually that’s the size of the reef. The actual island is just the smallest, whitest part of it, less than 100 meters long by less than 50 meters wide.
However, only one boat was able to start, so Bird, Jil and I, along with Epril and Marissa, the ice chest (which probably weighed more than any of the Filipinas accompanying us), our snorkeling gear, clothes, towels, sunblock and other stuff, while eight of the other girls, along with Bird’s wife rode in the other boat. The boat that took us had to go back and get the other 8 girls.
All 13 of us made the trip back in a single boat. So, we made 1.5 round trips rather than 2 round trips. They wanted to charge us 1600 pesos, but I insisted on only paying 1200 pesos. They were not very happy about that, but I wasn’t very happy about them asking us to pay for two full round trips when it was their problem that one of the boats would not run. Eventually they acquiesced.
In anticipation of the event I borrowed from a good friend of mine, and fellow Rotarian, Luigi Saraga, a Sanyo Xacti Waterproof Digital video and still camera.
Marissa and I filled out biggest ice chest with 20 cans of beer, a dozen bottles of Gatorade, and a dozen bottles of mineral water, obtained a couple of sets of snorkeling gear, (masks, snorkels, and fins).
See the full photo gallery here of Agutayan Island. Note these are photos from two different cameras, so about halfway through the photo gallery, images begin from the beginning from the other camera. There are two chronologies in the photo gallery.