The Flying Fox

There's a restaurant on the road to town, where the flying foxes cross over in plain view during their evening exodus. It's called the Flying Fox, appropriately, and serves "international cuisine." On Sundays it serves all you can eat German food for about four dollars. We had to check it out. The food at our place is good, but we have been here almost a month and have exhausted the menu. Bread and sausages and kraut sounded like a real treat. When we got there, there was a table full of European men who had been drinking since the buffet opened at 1:00 pm. We went late in hopes of seeing the bats after dinner. The proprietor asked us where we're from. Peter said Idaho, and the proprietor said, "Oh Idaho. I am from Florida," in a strong German accent. "Idaho is famous for potatoes. I will never forget my first Idaho potato. Pure gold and no need for butter." Then he escorted us to the food.

It was an impressive spread. Pork schnitzel, German potato salad, crabs, shrimps, oysters, compact and firm green bananas, a salad of sweet potato greens with a garlic vinegar, fresh baked sour dough bread with fennel, and French fries made from cassava root. It was amazing and we gorged ourselves. Victor, the owner, grows most of the food on his property and praised the health properties of the sweet potato greens, which are star shaped and a bit of work to chew, but are quite tasty.

Then the bats came out. Victor calls them his babies and pretended to call them out. Of course we had already seen the bats and knew it was the predictable fall of dusk that produced their flight, not his whistling call, but we acted impressed. "Here is the king!" he said when the first one appeared—a real giant. "Now two, then four, then eight, then a hundred." It was like an episode of Sesame Street listening to him count bats with such enthusiasm. Victor bought his property because of the bats and wants to protect them. He buys them at markets, where they're sold live for meat, and sets them free. He did the same with a flying lemur a local sold him for his "international menu." It seemed that Victor was a bit of a naturalist and we were very refreshed to meet such a person.

But Victor, it turned out, is an animal lover, but he's so much more than a naturalist. Victor is a staunch anarchist (like so many of the single male ex-pats that turn up on small islands) and also a treasure hunter. He worked in Florida diving to reap the bounty of Spanish wrecks. He is also a champion gold panner. "I can show you my trophy," he says, "1986 world champion." He was also, unrelatedly, a kickboxing world champion in the 80s, and he has the trophies to prove that too. Victor made his fortune when he discovered 400 Celtic coins in the Black Forest. That was his retirement money: one and a half million dollars (converted to U.S. dollars and adjusted for inflation). He's panned for gold all over the U.S., but he swears the biggest nuggets he's ever seen are near Surigao City, here in the Philippines, just a short ferry ride away. He'd love to get in there and tear that place up with a vacuum dredge, but foreigners can't take any minerals out of the Philippines and he'd be machine gunned down if he tried. The only way to take gold out of the country, he says, is to melt it into cubes, paint it black, strap it to a belt and call it dive weights. Not sure if he's actually tried this.

The night progressed with wild drunken story telling. Eventually, he went behind the bar and brought back a Tupperware full of treasure: dozens of rings, a pair of 4,000 year old Roman tweezers, a 2,000 year old brooch, a WWII bullet casing turned into a shotglass by servicemen. Then he called over his seventeen year old Filipina waitress who was wearing an ancient silver ring on almost every finger. Victor is one of those guys who always thinks you don't believe him. "You don't believe me? I'll show you," and he would summon his twenty-four-year old pregnant Filipina girlfriend over and ask her to retrieve an artifact or a book or a trophy. It was a crazy night that could have gone on forever, but our bellies and heads were full, so we thanked Victor for the food and the stories and the bats and took our leave.