Basketball & Safari

On my recent Philippine trip I visited what has to be the world's weirdest African wildlife sanctuary: Ferdinand Marco's former game preserve on Calauit Island. There giraffes and zebras wander the Philippine countryside, sharing their habitat with local animals including deer, monkeys, some weird porcupine species, and really big spiders. The giraffe on the left is munching a mango. Apparently they love the fruit, which is good, because the staff has almost no money to provide for them.

And of course, there's a basketball angle to this story. The island of Calauit is remote even for the Philippines: it's off the northern coast of Palawan, which is itself considered the "last frontier of the Philippines." The nearest small airport is a bouncy 4-hour jeep ride away from the northern coast, from where you have to find a local fisherman with an outrigger to ferry you over. Generator power only runs four hours a day on Calauit, and no running water was to be had. But the night I stayed there, during the brief period of electricity, the staff gathered to watch a tape of the final basketball game of the PBA championships on the island's only TV.

Staff basketball games are held every Monday on the home-made (but regulation size) dirt court near the game warden's house, with the warden always playing his favorite position of point guard.

For the record, the island manager says the ex-dictator Marcos did not bring the animals to the island for him and his buddies to hunt. It was just Ferdinand's pure environmental concern for the fauna of Africa....