fish landing
Part of the reason why we stayed at the fishing village rather than the resorts in Gumasa was to be near the small-scale fish landings in the area. Thats where you can get the freshest of catches at a bargain, before they bring the bounty to the city (General Santos City) where the price doubles.

The boats started coming in at 2AM in the morning. These outrigger boats went out to sea the previous day and they fish close to shore using spear guns and small nets (and hopefully not with dynamites!).

The waves were still lulling me to sleep and my wife practically had to peel me off the bed (a straw mat on a hard bamboo floor - still very inviting given the cool breeze).

We arrive at the one of the fish landing just as they were offloading the catch. Then the transactions began - a few kilos of these, a few kilos of those. They were trying to sell me a good sized ray but I turned it down, don't know how to cook it :). We bought several kilos of indangan (surgeonfish) and a couple groupers (they only caught a few, mostly small ones). My wife wanted more groupers so we had to walk to another landing site and we see what they got there.


The prices went up a bit, probably because its New Year. It would be steeper if they figured you for a tourist. With my DSLR, I really looked like one. But I can haggle since I can speak their dialects, besides I'm practically a "local" :). In the end we still got a good price, knowing how much the groupers cost if we buy them at the local fish market.


sunrise
I still had a few hours before sunrise so its back to bed. Sunset the previous day was far from spectacular and I was hoping for some colors on sunrise. I actually overslept and woke up at about 6:00AM! I had to hurry to the beach to find some rocks :D. Luckily its still overcast and I thought I can still get some long exposure shots given the lighting condition. Overcast sunrise may not be that bad sometimes :).