"Details,details,details! " a Province of Palawan Travel Page by bluebug

Matty and I have been in the Philippines since January 29th. We spent 3 weeks in the gorgeous province of Palawan. If you look at a map you'll see that this country is indeed in the shape of a Praying Mantis. Well Palawan is the slender arms of the insect. It's not protected by massive islands and mountains, so it is vulnerable to powerful typhoons coming from both the Pacific ocean and the South China sea. We stayed in the province for 3 weeks. The first week and a half were fine in the capital and in the are where the subterranean river are, but once we got to the islands it poured down on us for the remainder of our stay. Ok I'll start off with the capital of Peurto Princessa, referred to as 'Puerto" by the locals. Puerto, as described in the Lonely Planet, 'is a small village pumped up on steroids'. Although I've come to greatly dislike The Lonely Planet, I must say this is the most precise description. Other than the main drag of Rizal street in the towns' center, you can expect to bump along dirt roads snaking through the rest of this village in one of the hundreds of motorized tricycles licensed here. There is alot going on along Rizal street but just walk a few hundred yards away and it's back to the screaming animal farm that is village life.

Moving on, we hopped a local bus. Let me describe what a local bus is. These buses take on the basic appearance of our familiar American school buses. Unlike its' American counterpart, the Filipino bus, is usually vividly colored like the one on the Partridge family.It has no seat belts, sometimes it does not even have proper seats, instead it has a board on top of a sack of rice. People are so jam packed on to this thing that some sit on the roof with all the backpacks, water tanks for new towns, and of course as always the unfortunate box of live chickens and roosters that are inevidbly stacked on top of a large bleeding bag of dead fish. For a ride lasting usually only 8 hours or so along a dirt road, the price of 250 pesos is a steal! Fortunatly our ride from Puerto to Sabang was only 4 hours. Once in Sabang we threw our backpacks off at the cheapest spot on the beach kicked off our flip flops and treated oursleves to a never ending card game of ***head, thanks Elian for the addiction, and a frosty San Mig. Roughly around 3am every morning in this tiny beach village, we'd be frightened awake by the incessant crowing of several steroid pumped roosters, arrogantly voicing their presence right underneath our mosquito infested bungalow. By the time you get over the fact that you're too tired to actually get up and live out the fantasy of strangling each rooster slowly to its' death, it's 4am and the dogs start barking. By then you're so irrited by village life, you want to cry. At 6 am the pig tied up where your head is on the other side of the bungalow starts squealing excitedly for it's morning bucket of slop, seen being carried over to it by the farmer. By 6:10am I'm awake sitting outside watching, said events and also enjoying the scenery of the open sea right infront of me. I forget how tired I am and want to explore. This happens for a week. The day before we leave, we go the underground river. Recognized by as a World Heritage Site this river flows 21 kilometers under an impressive series of caves. The highest point in the cave being 150 meters in height. It's so dark in here that you need a powerful halogen lamp to help guide you and the rest of the people sharing your boat,safely through. Among the massive stalagtites and stalagmites seemingly 'dripping' from the ceiling are millions of tiny bats resting in the tiny nooks and crannies of the ceiling. Unfortunatly you can only travel 2km in. The rest you would need a special private guide, ropes to get you through the rougher currents deeper in, food, water, and more halogen lamps. We just stuck to the 2km tour.
After a week of sleep deprivation we hopped the 'bus' for a bumpy 9 hour ride to El Nido. This is the gateway to the Bacuit Archipelago, consisting of over a thousand islands. Settling in the only vacant place under 1,000 pesos Matt and I threw off the backpacks and washed off the 9 hours of dirt accumulated on the bus.

We grabbed a bite to eat and ran into a group of kids vactioning from Shanghai. They had just endured nearly the same amount of hours from Sabang as well, except they took the boat. Note to anyone ever planning to travel these islands. Do not ever take a small boat if travelling more than 30minuets. They were as close to being capsized without being capsized by the rough sea and heavy rains. Dripping wet, tired, and bummed out that they spent 3,000 more pesos that we did to take the bus, we ended up hanging out with them for the next week. On our third day they invited us to share a boatride with them out to the islands. Geronimo was our boat man. The typhoon had brought in a fleet of creepy,bulbous, jellyfish. We luckily managed to stay away from the big ones while snorkelling. Our first stop in the lagoon I was peacefully snorkelling around the edges examining the beautiful coral cliffs rimming the lagoon. On the way back out of the lagoon I saw a square figure in the distance. It was a box jelly fish. I panicked. I saw 5 more by the time I was out. I alerted Matt and our friend Jeff who were snorkelling in the same area. I was bummed because I was having a serene National Geographic moment, and these deadly square beasts made me paranoid. And, for apparently no reason at all. I reported my finds to Geronimo and he laughed at me and told me they will only kill you when they get bigger. These palm sized death killers were only babies, supposedly. Oh well a week later in the same lagoon I didn't want to chance coming across mom and dad and risk dying a quick death, thus sinking to the murky depths of this VERY deep lagoon. A week later, our fun Shanghai crew went back home, and we moved out of our expensive (to us) hotel room. It was off to the Cliffside Cottages, where we met two lovely gals from Vancouver. They were our neighbors and companions for the next week. On the first day that it had stopped raining that week, we quickly hopped a boat and did the same lagoon tour. This time around I swam in the shallower lagoon and had a small black tip reef shark swim right beneath me. It was so cute I couldn't get scared. There were two of them, they were just babies. The lagoons, turns out to be just a giant refuge, a sort of nursery for all these pint size death traps! For lunch on this day we stopped at an island connected to the backside of the big lagoon. Our captain thought it'd be a good idea to go snorkelling there. However, in order to get to the snorkeling spot you have to trudge through a muddy mangrove forest. As far as we knew there could have been quicksand there so all of turned around and just laid out on the beach and waited to our lunch of freshly caught dorado to be bbq'd. Unfortunatly when I was contemplating a route to get through the mangrove forest I was viciously attacked by mosquitos. I swears I'm not extrappelating one bit. Later that night and for the next week I had severe stomach pains and dropped several pounds from diarreah and vommiting. This made package B on the island tours a sad time. It was so pretty, my profile picture is one of the beaches on our stops that day. I made the best of it however. While stopping to take a watery *** on many of the pictuesque, white sand beaches, I was able to snap many photos. And, while clutching my stomach and withering in pain, I snorkelled and semi-delightfully enjoyed the coral reefs hiding sting rays. Within the next few days the intesity of the cramps decreased. I received an email from my cousin and he informed me of a house he could hook Matty and I up with for my upcoming birthday, on the tiny island of Siquijor. A few days later we hopped the 8 hour bus ride from El Nido to Puerto, and then a plane from Puerto to Cebu City. And that was our entrace to the Visayas.