Palawan, October 2 & 3

Oct. 2:

I was awoken twice last night and again at 4:30am this morning by… take a guess… the damn roosters! What’s worse, they crow almost exactly at 5 second intervals and DO NOT STOP throughout the day until it gets dark. I swear I’m going to request chicken for dinner tomorrow night.

Today was an unbelievable day! It’s a big thing to go diving around these parts because of all the WWII Japanese shipwrecks in the area. We knew we were going to go snorkel the wrecks (not to be confused with my husband, REX…) and I was crossing my fingers that we’d get to see something in the shallow waters. I was not disappointed! The first place we went was a very shallow water wreck (called Lusong Wreck) and there were plenty of corals that had taken up residence on the sunken iron frame. It was so beautiful!

WWII Japanese boat covered in corals

There were SO MANY fish, too! They would give us fish food and we could hand feed the fish and they would swarm like crazy! The other Filipinos who were with us kept jokingly “looking for Nemo” and eventually one of the staff dove down with a bottle and came back up with Nemo. He didn’t only catch one clown fish, he caught THREE! They were so cute, too… little babies less than an inch long. Yes, we released them. What would they do with a bunch of baby clown fish?

Corals and fishes under the sea

I did have one thing go wrong with me today. I was trying to be a priss about not getting my hair wet (yeah, like that lasted for long) and jumped off the boat in some strange fashion while bracing myself on some of its bamboo support beams. So first time in the water and I pull my right abdominal muscle! Now obviously I knew that this COULD be done, but have never actually known of anyone who has done it. Yes, I’m okay… but I’m sure I’ll be promptly reminded of my condition when I sit up tomorrow morning in bed. In the meantime, my caring husband is trying to make me laugh as much as possible.

Throughout the day we snorkeled a total of two wreck sites (one was a Japanese gunboat) and three beautiful coral reefs teeming with colorful marine life. I’ve decided that I’m afraid of sea urchins. They are just so ominous and prickly looking! Sometimes the water would be really shallow and if you spun your feet around to tread water you jammed them on the corals. I was so afraid I’d do this with a sea urchin! Luckily, though, no sea urchins found my foot… and we saw so many fish and corals everywhere we went!

More fishies...

Right before we came back for lunch we were taken to a small mangrove forest and asked to follow our hosts through the trees. We came upon this hidden hot spring on the edge of Sangat Island. When we first got there it was high tide and cold ocean water was seeping into the spring area. By the time we left, though, the tide had retreated and it was nice and warm in the hot spring! Oh, did I mention that it rained pretty much all day today? Personally, I think we were doing the best possible activities for rain, since the rain doesn’t affect our visibility underwater very much. Plus, the cold rain made that hot spring feel that much better!

After I showered the 5 layers of salt water from my body, I took my new Dan Brown book (bought it at the Hong Kong airport!) to the main pavilion area to read. On my way there, I notice one of the obnoxious roosters being taunted by a staff member holding another rooster. Apparently cock fighting is a major pastime in the Philippines. I guess these rooster nemeses of mine fall into that category. He saw me watching and got his buddy to come over so they could show me a proper cock fight… but with the back claws taped so that the “claw of death” was not used, and no rooster came near perishing. It was interesting… I got some pictures, although the birds were moving way too fast for my shutter speed.

Sure wish their "death claw" wasn't taped...

The other group that is here will be leaving early tomorrow… then we will really have this place to ourselves! Only us and the staff… not bad!

Yummy meals/dishes today: Fresh stuffed crab, lemon-garlic tuna, grilled mystery vegetable, tomato egg (breakfast), arroz con pollo, fried banana, sweet and sour fish


Oct. 3:
Today is my birthday! One of my friends on Facebook recently posted that he had the Deana Carter song “Strawberry Wine” stuck in his head. The first line that came to my mind from the song was, “I still remember when 30 was old.” My God, I can’t believe I’m already so close to being three decades old. Wow.

Rex has definitely made all birthdays for me extra-special events, for as long as I’ve known him. Last year we were in Bangkok, Thailand, for my birthday… exploring all the temples and exotic-ness. Two years ago I was getting ready to be married to my wonderful husband (anniversary in three days). Three years ago Rex brought me on a surprise “pack your bags, we’re going to the airport” kind of trip to South Padre… and proposed to me. The year before that, I received a beautiful bouquet of stargazer lilies at work and then returned home to find Rex had come over after his clinical to bring cake and balloons and sing to me as I walked in the door… while holding both kitties and with Ace in the room.

Today, I’m happy to report that my birthday was a mixture of relaxation and awe. We stayed on “our” island for most of today, leaving only to kayak around for a bit to the neighboring islands. Sangat Island is across the way and has a totally different topography from our island. Our island is made of rounded, rolling hills with almost no trees. It is blanketed with grass so from a distance it has a velvety appearance.

Rolling hills that make up our island.

Sangat Island is much bigger and the mountains are much taller and rockier. Strangely, the mountains are covered with so many TREES! One of the staff members kayaked behind us and pointed out some monkeys swinging in trees that we wouldn’t have noticed. He also showed us their seaweed farm (yes, you read right) which they produce for the purpose of making toothpastes and plastics. Apparently, this is the major industry for this area of the Philippines and one of the biggest in the world.

Sangat Island with the rocky peaks and many trees!

We spent a little bit of time snorkeling around our beach, and later on we hiked up our own mountain to the very peak which sports a BEAUTIFUL panoramic view of the surrounding islands and mangrove forests. I cannot even believe how huge these mangrove forests are! It’s truly amazing!

View of our bay from the top of our island hill.

I saw one of the most beautiful butterflies I’d ever seen. We spent about five minutes trying to get a good picture of it and finally I decided I’d try to hold it. I put my finger slowly over to where its legs were at, and it stepped right on! I was so excited to get to hold this butterfly… and we finally got our pictures of it while it sat on my hand for five minutes. Rex called it my “birthday butterfly”.

Birthday butterfly =)

After the hike we lounged around reading our books by the ocean. It was so breezy and peaceful (we were far enough away from the roosters to where the ocean blocked them out). What a perfect ending to a perfect day!

Update on those darned roosters… we switched cabins to one farther away. We can still hear them, but they are not deafeningly loud because they are no longer browsing through our front yard. Maybe it was just coincidence, but we DID have fried chicken for lunch today after we saw one of the guys carrying a rooster towards the kitchen =) Upon request?

Yummy meals/foods today: cordon bleu, creamy parmesan pasta, fried chicken, FRESH calamari, chorizo sausage for breakfast

Philippines, October 1st

We didn’t get much sleep last night because we didn’t get to the hotel until about 1am… but we were up bright and early to get to the domestic terminal of the Manila airport this morning! So early, in fact, that we couldn’t even check in for an hour once we got there. We had totally miscalculated how long it would take us to get to the airport… we were banking on a 30 minute no-traffic distance but WITH that notorious Manila traffic. Instead, it took us 10 minutes. Lessons learned.

Our plane actually left EARLY (like as in 15 minutes… have you ever heard of that before?) and when we pulled up into the Busuanga Airport it was barely 10:30am. There was some amazing scenery as we were flying into the airport, sailing over hundreds of tiny islands.

We ended up finding this awesome deal with a place called Majika Island Resort and so we booked it… finalizing the details 30 minutes before we boarded the plane! The driver was waiting for us to take us to Coron city proper and have lunch and wait for the boat to take us to our private island paradise.

We walked around the town of Coron for a couple of hours… bought a few things we needed, let Rex practice his Tagalog, and then it started to rain.

Yeah, it was only a passing shower, but we stepped into a kind lady’s shop for nearly half an hour waiting for it to stop pouring. In that time, the drains(of which there were 2 right by her shop) quickly filled and the street turned into a river!

People were still making their way along with their umbrellas and pants hiked up like it was an every day occurance… and I would wholeheartedly believe that it is!

Once the water was about half a foot deep, it stopped raining. This was good because the next step was water coming into the shop we had taken refuge in. We promptly purchased flip-flops(plastic ones that we could get wet) from the store owner and by the time the quick transaction was done, the streets had nearly cleared of all the water! Insane!! I would definitely say that the Philippines is built for rainy weather.

We tried to make a stop at the only ATM on the entire island before heading off to Majika’s, but the ATM was out of order. Well, I guess $40 (in pesos) will have to get us through the next 10 days! Both places we’re staying at are all-inclusive of food and water activities, so it should be no problem. Just no shopping!

Finally we boarded our bangka for the 45 minute ride to our island resort.

The ride was GORGEOUS beyond belief! There are small islands just scattered everywhere throughout this area of Palawan (the province we’re in). These islands are called the Calamian Islands, in the northern-most part of the province. The islands all have mountains running through the center, but I’m not sure if any are volcanic.

The resort is… well, not what I’d think of with the word “resort”, but it’s comfortable and the staff and food are amazing! We have our own private cabin… although we don’t have electricity in it for 12 hours a day! The beach is totally gone during high tide, but the view of the islands across the way is amazing!

We took a “kayak” (not exactly what would come to mind when you think the word… this was a Filipino style one)

We rowed out to see what was around the corner of our island, and we found a breathtakingly beautiful mangrove forest! There were areas that looked like trails for boats running through, so we rowed our way in. It was really something to see all those crazy roots entangled in each other on the banks of the ocean!

While we were kayaking we also found some starfish in the shallow waters near our resort. We picked them up and took some pictures with them… so awesome!

After kayaking, we came back to watch a beautiful sunset from the handmade floating pier on our beach. I only had our old camera with me out there, so I sure hope those pictures turned out well!

There is another group here with us for the time being that are staying in all the cabins farthest away from the domestic animal area… so for now, we’re having to deal with the persistent calling of the rooster. Have I ever mentioned that I hate roosters? Well there you have it. And I’m sure this will not be the last you hear of this particular complaint.

Yummy meals/dishes today: fried squid cakes (but SO good), chicken adobo, sweet rice with cinnamon and potato, lumpia Shanghai