When I was still a child, my family would always head to a small town called San Remegio up north of Cebu, Philippines to spend our summer days at the beach. I could always recall how excited I and my siblings were when classes would be over for the year and our parents would announce we were staying at our ancestral home for the next two months. Those were the days!
I grew up loving the beach and spending hours playing with the sand until sunsets would creep in over the horizon and mom would come to the shore shouting our names for us to come home. Well, our house was just directly across the beach. So if we weren't inside the house, we were running across the wide stretch of fine sand or catching small fish or collecting shells with our cousins.
The beach in San Remegio has been popular among locals from neighboring towns and until recent years tourists from the south too would come visiting this place to enjoy a swim or some leisure time with their families. It was said that the beaches here were rich in marine life however fishermen were using dynamites back then and slowly and surely destroyed the marine ecosystem. Not sure how long but dynamite fishing has been prohibited now.
A few kilometers from the shore one can happily enjoy swimming under the sun since the sand is fine and the water is crystal clear. However, beyond that, seaweeds conquers the seafloor with plentiful of sea urchins lying around and so we were prohibited from going beyond since childhood and somehow it stuck with us even till we grew up.
Not until my younger sister recently insisted we explore the unknown. Well, she and my dad managed to discover a long pipeline stretching into the open sea last year and she wanted to go back. Yet despite that, I hesitated as I thought there were no corals or colorful fishes we can find out there because of the history of dynamite fishing. And oh boy was I proven wrong when I finally gave in as she told me that since I already knew how to freedive, it should be easy for me to dive deeper and prove myself wrong. Oh, I couldn't refuse the challenge!
So, did I enjoy freediving in my hometown?
Was I able to find thriving marine life far beyond?
Well, watch the video till the end! š
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