Monster pig

One of the most remote places I visited for work in the Philippines was a place called Kalamansig, which was a four hour drive from the office, then an hour on a boat, and then a short trip on the back of a motorbike. Following a very smoothly run food distribution, I ventured off to find a bathroom, which is when I stumbled upon the giant above.

I remember writing a blog post about this pig, which went along the lines of "I saw a tail swishing from around the corner. It was too high to be a dog, but too low to be a cow. I walked around the corner and was greeted by the sight of the most ginormous testicles," which I then compared in size to the bull statue on Wall St in New York (it's a big statue).

This pig was a monster; it was about the size of a large Shetland pony, or a baby hippo with an overactive thyroid gland. I wish there had been something around to provide a better sense of how big it really was. This photo was taken around the time that there was a lot of talk about H1N1, the swine flu, and I imagined that if this guy was a carrier, that the whole island of Mindanao (the 19th largest in the world incidentally) would be infected by him, single hoofedly.

Piggies in Peru

I have a fondness for pigs, well, more for piglets. I found this family outside a touristy market stop at the start of a bus journey through the Sacred Valley in Peru. The piglets were quite docile, and happy to follow their hairy mother around, sniffing around for tasty morsels in the grass. What can’t be seen in this photo is one of the piglets, who had the same colouring as its mother, but with spots instead of stripes like the others. 

They didn't seem at all bothered by the bus loads of people pulling up, focusing much more on finding something tasty to munch on. How I wish I could scoop up the little one on the right and take it home with me!