After 12 months, I was back again in Looc Fish Sanctuary. This time with colleagues from Manila. Except for a few interesting species of fish that lurked under the floating raft and the view of stranded ship in the distance, nothing much has changed.
No, we can't make it. Yes, we can.
I was chanting these lines in my head on our way to Looc aboard a knotty motorcycle. Our driver understood how crucial it was for us to reach Looc before 4:30PM and so he went full throttle but his motorcycle could only do so much. Apparently, it wasn't meant for long-distance travel. He changed the vehicle into a more road-fit one, allowing us to keep up with the rest of the team whose motorcycles were kilometers ahead of us. Err - no, that wasn't exactly the case. They actually pulled over and waited for us to make sure we were all right. Then they let us go first, and after a few seconds we were at the tail end again.
With the rate we were going, I didn't think that we could reach Looc before the sanctuary closed for the day. But somehow we did. We arrived in town a few minutes past four. I told my travel mates to hurry since the sanctuary was about to close. Chop, chop, people! After throwing our stuff carelessly in a vacant room at Angelique Inn, we sprinted towards the port. The guys, who are called BayWatchers (watchers of the sanctuary), at the registration office told us we almost didn't make it. They were closing much earlier that day because there was an advice from their boss. I heaved a sigh of relief.

After paying 100 pesos (entrance fee), a Baywatch officer ushered us to a boat at the far end of the port
. It's a big boat, one that can carry at most 15 people.
The transfer to the sanctuary took less than 10 minutes.