Port Barton, Palawan, The Philippines

29th March - 3rd April 2012 The last leg into Port Barton was rather bumpy and plagued by wheel problems, we arrived in one piece and set about combing the tiny Port town for budget accomodation, the last place we looked at was the best and cheapest, so we stayed in Angela's Bungalows while we were there. We had a stroll along the beach and had a beer and a sandwich from a trumped up Jambalaya place on the waterfront. There were only three tables and two of them weren't taken, we'd decided to try it because they'd gone on and on about how wonderful they were, Djalma wasn't that much impressed and said so in their guestbook, I was mortified especially when the waitress read our comments just round the corner.

From Port Barton, Palawan, The Philippines

We spent the next few days mainly relaxing, I didn't feel like doing much, I'd lost my yoga mat in El Nido – it had blown off the balcony where I'd left it to try after washing it – and so I stuck to reading and taking afternoon naps. Both of felt much the sma eway we had when Kate left Nepal; we're done now, what's the point in doing more? Djalma went snorkelling with a diving company and met some nice people and we had a couple of nice evenings together making the most of extended happy hours and generally cheap beer. On the first day of April we loaded ourselves onto the 9am Jeepney back to Puerta Princesa, it was along dusty ride and at the end of it we and our bags were covered in a not-so-fine layer of orange dust. Back in the main city of Palawan we had lunch and then found a nicer place to have a second lunch and use the internet, killing time before our flight left for Manila. We arrived in Manila and went straight to our hotel room which we'd booked and paid for before leaving Manila over a week ago, we were up bright and early the next morning for our flight to Auckland. It all felt rather un-real, New Zealand was to be our 21st and final stop on our extended honeymoon and reaching it felt rather final. Exciting though. We had a stop over in Kuala Lumpur and had lots of food before boarding our plane and finishing the final leg of the journey. I managed to snooze with my legs up, for most of the flight, Djalma moved over the aisle to some free window seats and stayed there for the flight, I made sure we were sitting together come landing time though, getting to be a bit of a nervous flier. Getting through immigration was fine and as we weren't carrying any illegal biological weapons, like an undeclared apple, we were through in no time. Grandpa and his new wife Fran were waiting to meet us in the arrivals lounge and took us back to Catherine's for a cup of tea.

El Nido, Palawan, The Philippines

24th - 29th March 2012 We spent much of our time in El Nido just chilling out, the day after we arrived we had a gorgeous vegetable curry and G&T for dinner and it was a restaurant that I returned to when I wanted to write. Both of us worked out which wasn't much fun without a fan, the electricity came on around 2pm and lasted until the evening. We read and watched films and took walks along the beach. It rained solidly for one day, the day that we'd planned to join a boat trip around some of the islands so we decided to put it off until the following and what turned out to be our last day.

From El Nido, Palawan, The Philippines

The boat trip was okay, I really think that the success of these trips depends a lot on who you're spending the day with, we had a few very Americanised Filipino's, a young Russian couple, a Dutch couple who were friendly and a young Filipino girl with a much older (and rather annoying) American man. You could say it was a mixed bag, the islands were quite nice but because I didn't want to get my burn wet, or at least as little as possible, I declined the snorkelling into “secret” lagoons and stayed on the boat. We stopped for lunch on one island and listened to half blind cat perched on the roof of a hut constantly meowing for food, I gave in and delivered up some fish careful to keep my distance – it looked a bit bonkers. We stopped off at the last beach and had a coconut to drink before killing some time swimming (Djalma) and sitting on a quiet rock at the far end of the beach (me). I was quite relived to get off the boat and back to the relative quiet of our hotel room.

From El Nido, Palawan, The Philippines

We had steak for dinner at a French restaurant that night - it was gorgeous although I was told by the waitress that I couldn't half my particular steak cooked medium because it wouldn't be good, I had it medium rare and swapped it with Djalma's medium cooked steak when the blood became a little too much. We left early the next morning and got a bus going to Roxas where we changed and got a Jeepney to Port Barton, a much quieter town that was definitely more suited to doing absolutely nothing.

Talisay, Luzon, The Philippines

21st - 24th March 2012 Having arrived in town and fed ourselves Kate and I decided to explore the town so we headed out together and bought some rather tasty drinks in the form of a buko (coconut) shake. We saw a sign advertising a cock-fighting and pigs and piglet farm so on a whim we decided to visit it. It just so happened that it was up a very steep hill and the road wasn't very short. We had fun though and plenty of rest stops, the views going up the road from various points, was beautiful we looked out over Lake Taal and it's resident volcanoes. Just so you know the general attraction of Talisay is it's proximity to some rather spectacular and occasionally active volcanic landscape, we had hoped to make a day trip to one of the volcanoes but it was off limits due to seismic activity, better safe than sorry!

From Talisay, Luzon, The Philippines

Having walked up much of the long steep road that was still long and steep for much farther than we cared to walk, we saw one cock-fighting farm and went in to have a look and asked for directions. The guys didn't speak much English but one young guy with a few words took us round his farm and tried to explain things as best he could apologising the whole time for the gaps in his English, basically half the cocks that he breeds go on to be winners, a 50/50 split between that and a loser. The views of the volcano in Lake Taal from the edge of his farm were wonderful and an older guy soon joined us and gave us directions to the pigs and piglets that we were hoping to see.

From Talisay, Luzon, The Philippines

We continued on up the road and after a while we saw another sign and followed that, all we saw was some cockerels sitting on their separated perches and some rather hungry looking guard dogs. We heard some pigs but we never found anyone to show them to us and decided to leave the barking salivating dogs to it. The walk back down was much easier and quicker and we arrived back before dark.

From Talisay, Luzon, The Philippines

The next morning we woke up bright and early for our boat across the lake to the volcano. We met some German guys over dinner the previous night and had arranged to share a boat (and the cost) with them. The ride over wasn't particularly long ad the waves were quite small although we all got rather wet coming back. We arrived on the island in the lake and realised that we didn't have enough money to pay the park fee and have breakfast, fortunately the Germans were better prepared and lent us the cash, we followed our skipper's directions and started up the dusty track dodging horse poo and kicking up dirt. I was rather mortified to find that I wasn't quite as fit as I thought I'd come to be since Kate last visited us in Nepal. With all the yoga and the working out I thought that I'd be leaving them way behind eating my dust, ha!

From Talisay, Luzon, The Philippines

If only. I did manage to squeeze in a few more rest stops using the excuse of taking photographs and we made it further on and up – taking about twice the amount of time that the guy at our hotel had told us it would take. The views were gorgeous and there was a delicious breeze that swept the long grass flat and kept us cool on the hike up to the crater rim of the lake in the lake. There were a few houses and some people selling coconuts but we were the only people there, we got to the edge and looked out at the dark green lake that was ringed with hidden vents letting out steam.

From Talisay, Luzon, The Philippines

Kate had stayed to wait with her gasping elder(ly) sister and we walked up a ridge to join the boys, the view from there was even better, they had found a spot on some hot rocks to sit down on and enjoy the view from, avoiding some of the steaming vents we joined them and took photos of the lake in a volcano in a lake in a volcano.

From Talisay, Luzon, The Philippines

The whole place was beautiful and we killed a fair amount of time sitting around and taking photos, just as we were about to leave a couple of guys with golf clubs strolled up and invited the lads to a few puts, they brought some golf balls and did their best to get them into the water, no-one even came close but Djalma did manage to get the furthest (that's my boy!). We climbed back down kicking up huge streams of fine dust blinding the people who weren't quick enough to be in front. We located our skipper and got in the boat to be taken back across to mainland and were royally wetted along the way. I am too old for this.

From Talisay, Luzon, The Philippines

Back in our rooms we had a nap and then once again Kate and I headed out. This time we decided to head about 9km up to Tagatay where there were supposedly some good views of Lake Taal, I say supposedly because we only really saw one view and couldn't be bothered to walk the 5km odd into the centre of town to find out more. Instead we stopped off at a coffee shop selling art and talked over coffees, cake and chips. I did manage to get Katie to one lookout point but the views weren't that amazing so we headed back, at one point I realised that I'd lost my watch and we spent the whole way back searching the ground for it – it turned out that it had dropped off in the tricycle ride up to Tagatay and the driver had left it with a group of drivers who spotted us when we got back into town.

From Talisay, Luzon, The Philippines

The ride back was fun, I really tried hard to negotiate a cheaper fare particularly as they wouldn't drop us off at our hotel but the guy was friendly so after much umming and ahhing Kate and I clambered in a were whizzed downhill to a drop off point and walked the rest of the way into town. We left Talisay early the next morning on a Jeepney, at some point we got on a bus, much more comfortable, and then on another Jeepney to the right part of town. We spent the whole afternoon in one of the largest shopping centres in Asia, Katie treated us to pizza, we strolled round the shops, I treated Kate and myself to enormous ice cream sundaes and then we watched the Hunger Games. Aside from food and some duct tape (to fix Kate's bag) we didn't buy anything else. We caught a yellow van back to town and had a very early night. Kate's flight to Cebu left early the next morning and we'd managed to book flights to the island of Palawan shortly after hers left, so after dropping her off at one terminal we jumped in another taxi and went to ours. Our flight was delayed and I spent most of the time twiddling my thumbs debating whether or not to get a coffee. By mid-morning we had arrived in Palawan and had sorted ourselves a couple of seats on private minivan, it took it's time to fill up and we ended up behind some Italians with their Italian speaking Filipino wives who were clearly more used to European ways than Asian. We were travelling to the Southern tip of the island, El Nido which took us about five hours. We spilt up for our usual hotel search and for the first time managed to lose each other. We eventually found a room that we could afford and wouldn't set off Djalma's allergies/asthma and settled in for a few days stay.