Subic Bay, Baby

My alarm went off much too early this morning. 5:15 is too early just about any day.

But it was worthwhile, as I spent the day at Subic Bay with a couple of Shelly's colleagues who were headed there on business and invited me along for the ride.

Subic Bay is a natural deep-water port that was once home to the U.S. Navy and, before that, the Spanish fleet. Today the former navy base has been turned into a free trade zone and tourist destination.

When the Navy moved out, it left behind hundreds upon hundreds of old buildings, most of which remain in use today, and the infrastructure to support a small city.

This sign from the Public Works Commission just has to be a Navy remnant. Mr. Kool is affixed firmly to a huge air conditioning unit that appears to be in dire need of a visit from, well, Mr. Kool.

One of the largest tenants at Subic is FedEx, which hubs at least part of its Asian traffic here. The FedEx presence was of particular interest to me because, when I bought my computer, the shipping details showed that it was sent from China, where it was built, to Subic Bay, and then on to the U.S. I tried to take a photo of the tail of a FedEx plane to illustrate this paragraph, but a guard hustled over and told me that photography was "not authorized." So we drove around the corner and shot this one instead, which is all the better for being taken in front of a sign indicating that photography is, indeed, forbidden.

Part of the tourism development includes Ocean World, a small-but-informative Sea-World-like park though with, I think, more emphasis on education than Sea World. Walking through the aquarium, I discovered that while our digital camera was just not hacking it when it came to taking pictures of the fish, the camera on Rose's cell phone was taking good shots. Though I have yet to figure out how to use most of my phone, I have mastered the camera function.

As we wandered through the aquarium, we were met by Jeff, a park guide who explained each of the different tanks on display to us, and then invited us to come see the park's sea lion-painting show. Not a show where sea lions were painted, he explained, but a show where the sea lions did the painting.

"What kind of paintings do the sea lions make?" Elmer asked, quite reasonably.

"Abstract," Jeff joked.

Actually, Colby's painting was not nearly so abstract, as here he is shown painting the "L" in his name. We were told that the sea lions at Ocean World are South American sea lions, "the dumbest of all sea lions."

"Yet they can paint," Rose pointed out.

"Yes, but we have to feed them after each trick," Jeff said. "The California sea lions like you'd see at Sea World will perform without being fed after each trick."

"Sounds to me like it's the South American sea lion that's the smart one," Elmer said.

Subic is also home to thousands of macaque monkeys which live in the dense tropical forest. Ocean World has a rescued animals exhibit which includes a new family of macaques, which are actually a group of rescued individuals from which a new clan is before formed after the monkeys are nursed back to health. If released individually, a guide explained, they would be shunned by other groups; by releasing them as a family, they should survive in the wild.