Turning Back Time

The bus is scheduled to depart at 5:30am so the neighbor of my host family, Lani, says we can leave around 5:00am. The bus shouldn’t leave until 6:30am is what she tells us. Knowing it takes at least a half hour to get to the terminal Sara, a new volunteer living with Lani, and I are a bit leery of this plan and decide we’d feel more comfortable leaving by 4:45am. We get up, get ready, and wait, and wait, and wait some more (waiting is a common theme in the Philippines). The clock is ticking and it is now 5:00am and we head to the terminal. Nothing ever leaves on time I tell myself. Nothing, except the only bus to San Isidro where we need to catch the only ferry to Malapascua. It’s 5:30am when we arrive and the bus is nowhere to be found. A little bummed and a lot tired because we had saturation the night before and only three hours of sleep, I figure I’ll just try again the next day. One of the great things of the Philippines is that nothing really matters.

Then the meeting of the minds occurs. There were seriously ten people gathered around all talking excitedly in all tones in Tagalog or Visayas (I can’t tell the difference) and pointing in various directions. Another great thing of the Philippines is the people are so friendly and love to help when they can. After about 15 minutes Lani comes over to us and says there is an alternative route, but we’d need the van to leave right now to make it to the ferry on time. What this means is we have to buy all the extra seats so the van is considered full and can depart. Fortunately it is less than $10 so we jump at the opportunity to still make it to Malapascua. What we didn’t know is what exactly lies ahead of us. Lani made it sound like we were just taking a different van to a different ferry. I knew better since I had never heard of this route before now and that it took ten people to come up with the plan, but I figured it was worth a shot.

So what should have been a six hour journey turned into an hour and half van ride, an hour and a half wait for the ferry, a two hour ferry, a 30 minute tricycle ride to the bus terminal, an hour and a half public bus. Riding the public bus was like riding a roller coaster for an hour and a half. There were twists and turns at speeds you accumulate only by going down the steepest slopes. The best part was how the entire bus turned around to watch Sara and I fly out of our seats when they knew the crazy bumps were coming. After the roller coaster ride we had another 30 minute wait (only because we scheduled a private boat otherwise it could have been up to two hours), a 45 minute ferry, and about 10 hours later we finally reached our destination, Malapascua, and it was worth every second.

Malapascua is an undeveloped paradise. The sand was as white as snow and the locals have not been tainted by tourism. There are no cars or streets only paths of sands for habal habals or walking. It was so peaceful that I fell asleep under the stars after dinner on the beach. I even met a guy on the ferry home who was on a four hour journey to get to the nearest ATM. It was as if someone turned back time.

Rub-a-Dub-Dub

Cross my heart I did not set this up. I about died!