13th - 17th March 2012
Having found our rooms, both incidentally with spectacular sky views from the outdoor bathrooms (night wees were the best – the stars were incredible) we went back to the first hotel we stopped at and had some lunch. After a small wait Kate and Djalma went snorkelling, my rather juicy looking burn kept me on dry land despite persistent nagging from my sister and husband to join them in the water.
I didn't do much in the afternoon, it was hot so I read on the balcony and listened to a small group practising percussion – they were really very good which was just as well because they were very loud.
After Kate and Djalma had dried off we set off together to the beach to find a nice place for sunset. The beach was lined with the same small, long armed boats that we'd come across in and children were playing make believe dinner parties with bottle caps and seaweed. We stopped to talk to a guy who was thrashing a net of sea urchins to get the poisonous spikes off. We asked him what he was doing and he gave us a taste of the urchin, Djalma was the only one brave enough to actually eat the salty tasting snotty looking brown goop, I licked it but decided that sea urchins weren't for me. We carried on down the end of the beach, the late afternoon sun was beautiful and everything was bathed in the warm soft light. We walked to the end of the beach and climbed across the big boulders to find a place to set the GoPros down for some time lapse videos and then we just sat and watched the sky change. The sunset was spectacular (I seem to be using that word a lot!) and it was really nice sitting down to watch a beautiful show with two people I love very much. We watched until the first stars came out and then headed to dinner.
We got up nice and early the next morning and took ourselves off for a two hour stroll up the hill for some gorgeous views. After a quite a few steps and a short walk through some fields and past the odd goat we made it to the top of the hill and some aerials that we climbed for a good breeze and the best views of Negros. It was beautiful and after the exertion getting up the steps the rest was perfect. We took several photos and then decided to leave out names on one of the cacti and on the side of an abandoned building. After a little exploring we decided to leave an annoyed lone cow in peace and started back down. We didn't get far before Kate and Djalma were distracted by a big tree and they were half way up it before I knew what was happening. We tried to find another way back down but decided against getting lost and took the steps down instead. It was a perfect start to a day that got even better for Kate and Djalma.
When we got back down they took their snorkelling gear and had a morning and an afternoon full of turtles. I kid you not they didn't spend more than a minute in the water without seeing one either swimming by or more often than not, having lunch on sea grass and algae. When they came back for lunch they were popping with excitement and I must admit I was a little jealous but it was nice to see them both so enthusiastic. While they were out I continued to read Fried Green Onions at the Whistle Stop Café, a brilliant book it didn't quite take my mind off the fact that it was hot, there was no electricity and that frequent showers were off the menu because water was in short supply. They went back out in the afternoon and saw zillions more turtles while I worked on photos, read and grumped the afternoon away. We had dinner the same place that we had lunch, at a small local restaurant that we had to pre-order, the lunch was good with gorgeous pumpkin but the evening vegetable was boiled cabbage and it didn't go down quite as well.
We had decided to leave the next day, Kate and Djalma persuaded me to join them for a little snorkelling and after Djalma did a great job of wrapping up my burn with a plastic bag and a good kilometre of selotape we hit the water. To avoid moving my leg as much as possible Djalma wore the fins and dragged me along while I tried to keep my sarong down to keep the sun off my back. I can't say it was the nicest swim/snorkelling ever but just at the end we saw a turtle and got quite close just watching it having breakfast, it was the closest I'd been to a turtle before and I was surprised at how big the head was, it looked enormous. Tired of being pulled around in the water I decided to get and de-salt myself, but not too much because the boat ride back to Negros would be wet as well.
And it was, having packed up and checked our room we trudged along the beach saying goodbye to the little slice of the Philippines and got on the boat. For most of the ride I stayed huddled in my poncho and avoided the worst of the sprays (Kate and Djalma didn't try and fight it, enjoyed the boat trip a lot more and got dripping wet). My pants were dry right up until the moment I climbed into Djalma's arms to be carried to shore and then big swell caught me right in the backside. I was sorely unimpressed. We waited just a few minutes at the end of the road necking down the equivalent of orange Fanta and dried off in the hot air waiting for a bus going North.
Having left Apo Island behind we now had along trip ahead of us to get to Boracay. Our bus didn't g us very far, we wanted to try and get as far as Bacolod but didn't even make it to Sipalay, we stopped at a small dusty town called Bayawan where everyone save for small children got around in tricycles. When we asked the ticket/information guy at the bus station we told us that it would take twenty minutes to walk to the nearest, cheapest hotel, we followed his directions, end of the road and round the corner – it took us less than three minutes, literally. We bunked up together in a small shared room, it was a place that was cheap enough for lorry drivers to sleep there and so there were plenty of middle aged guys sitting round watching the T.V. There was even a super old and very deaf guy who sat a metre in front of his television on full blast watching an unfolding trial of a corrupt government official, the same one everyone else in town was watching.
We walked back to the bus station and sat down to the best meal that we'd had in the Philippines, it even included vegetables! Having eaten to bursting point we headed back for showers and then Kate and I went out to get a plastic bag full of baked things – chocolate biscuits, banana loaves and some sesame seed covered fried dough balls (sounds gross, tasted delicious) for breakfast the next morning. We had decided to get the 3am bus to Bacolod which ended up taking a good 7 hours. We rolled out of bed just after 2am having gone to bed at 7 the previous evening. We crept through town and arrived at the bus station early which was just as well because the bus left ten minutes early.
We slept most of the way there, we picked up noisy passengers along the way who didn't quite appreciate our early start but they got off soon enough. We had a coffee stop around 6am and I decided right at the last minute to have a coffee myself, after two minutes of mixing my 3 in 1 sachet (coffee, creamer and sugar) with piping hot water everyone started getting on the bus, the lady in the shop had a good chuckle as she watched me trying to drink as much of my coffee as I could before leaving. As it turned out I could have had a least an extra minute, when I walked back to the bus I passed the driver taking a leak on his right front wheel, charming.
We pulled up in Bacolod and got tickets for 12.30 which was a stroke of luck because the main passenger carrier had sold out all of it's tickets for the whole day – not a pleasant feeling. We had time for sweet spaghetti and coke's and then killed time in the waiting lounge for our ferry to Iloilo on the island of Panay. The ferry was a couple of hours long and we slept on that too, we pulled up in town and then wasted time in an air-conditioned shopping centre trying to find a place that organised climbing and rented equipment. It turns out that the owners of the climbing shop that we had details for had moved to the USA and renting equipment from a local climber was about 100USD, extortionate. By the time we'd found this out we'd spent a good hour there, valuable travelling time. I have to say that it wasn't completely wasted because Kate and I freshened up on the ladies 'comfort room' and had some chocolate cake.
We got directions to the bus station and took a couple of Jeepneys to get there only to find that it was the wrong terminal and the last bus North to Kalibo was at 5pm. Just our luck, it was rush hour, we took a taxi and asked him to put his foot down, we were stuck in a long line of traffic and we walked the last few hundred metres (the taxi driver told us it was 50 metres?!) and made it just in time for the last bus. We got on and it pulled away.
The bus ride wasn't that long, just a few hours and somewhere near the end a guy got on selling hot buko (coconut) pies, we all had one and then decided they were so delicious that we should have another. That took care of dinner and when we pulled up in Kalibo we took a tricycle directly to a hotel that we'd called from the bus. I think it's fair to say we all slept rather well that night.
The next morning we took it slowly had some rather dodgy Filipino food for breakfast, we found out later that Djalma was noshing on brain (he thought it was small intestine) mine was mainly fat and bone. We got in the back of a cramped minivan and arrived in Caticlan the last port of call before Boracay. Kate and I queued up at the various counters buying 3 different tickets just to get there, the 25 peso boat ticket was the smallest part of the cost to get there, we had to pay a port fee and an environmental tax as well. We bought some more water and a bottle of rum to take with us and then got on the next boat. The ride took 10 minutes and then we were there, the Philippines biggest attraction and possibly the most expensive place to do anything.
We met a tourism guide who took us straight to a hotel in our price range complete with wifi and we settled in.
No comments:
Post a Comment