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.
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.
