Phillipines Adventure - Firefly Trees

Most of today paled in comparison to this evening’s activity, but we’ll get to that in a minute. The morning began inauspiciously – a mosquito bite on my middle finger, drizzle during my outdoor breakfast and 4 hours of meetings and presentations. Things started to improve, however, as we traveled the island, visiting a craft market and the white sand beach on neighboring Panglao Island. From there we stopped in on the town hall of a Barangay (village unit) to watch some community mobilization in progress.

The highlight of the day, by far, was dinner aboard the floating resto, though the meal itself was nothing to write home about. I don’t know if it’s a fair comparison, but the food I’ve had so far reminds me of nothing so much as take-out Chinese. After dinner was finished, I was growing tired of socializing with people I barely knew. I was hoping for some alone time and rest back at the hotel, but before I could jump ship, our floating resto began to drift. The next thing I knew, some guy was standing at the bow (does a floating restaurant have a bow?) with a mic and a guitar singing a non-stop stream of hilariously random songs. He sang a few songs in Tagalog, one in Mandarin and many in English, including classics like Country Road, Rhinestone Cowboy, The Sound of Silence… you get the picture. The best part was that almost everyone on the boat knew the words to all the songs. I think I was the only one who didn’t!

Anyway, we were floating along on the Loay River as darkness fell. I was chuckling at the music and enjoying the cool night air when someone lit up the shore of the river with a spotlight, revealing palm trees infested with huge, white herons. Imagine my reaction! Surprise birdies! It was an unbelievable sight. I don’t know how many there were, but a single palm tree easily held 10-20 large birds and there was tree after tree. As we continued along the river, they doused the spotlights. There were hundreds of fireflies orbiting a palm tree, lighting it up in a sparkling fireworks display. As I leaned over the railing and looked down river more fireflies, blinking and shining and luminous, lit up other trees along the dark shoreline. Every swarm we passed perfectly outlined the shape of the tree.

At first I tried desperately to get a movie of either the herons or the fireflies, but it became obvious that it was too dark and I just sat back and soaked it in, wishing that Marcus were here to see this and sing along to all his favorite songs. It was another of those moments that you sometimes have when traveling alone – they seem at once so random and so remarkable. It reminded me of being stuck in an elevator for 30 minutes in an historic building in Italy, or delivering an oversized papaya to a bunch of confused but curious children in Uganda. Tonight, I’m floating down the Loay River on Bohol Island in the Philippines, staring at swarms of white herons and fireflies. I don’t have a single picture, but I won’t be forgetting this anytime soon.