Lise woke me up in the middle of the night. She said she had felt a drop. Immediately, we leapt up into action. It was emergency tent time. We knew what to do, and we were inside the tent while the rain was still a tiny drizzle. By the time the sun came up, the rain was pounding our tent, and I could hear all the other beach sleepers around us gather up their bedding and run back to the village.
Within an hour or two, the weather was back to normal.
The rain continued through the morning, so we just lazed in the tent until it passed. Then we laid out the tent to dry in the sun. It didn’t take long as it went from pouring rain to blazing sun in about eight seconds. Martin came and found us and asked if we wanted to go for a ride on his boat. Well…of course. We walked through the village, said hello to his mother and informed her that we would be out on the boat. His dad was already out fishing, but we took their smaller boat. It was a rickety little canoe with outriggers on either side to keep the boat stable in rougher seas. We didn’t know exactly what the plan was, but we trusted in Martin. He paddled from the back of the boat. We offered to put our time in paddling, but he insisted that we just relax.
I had asked Martin if many tourists make it out to this island and he said no, and estimated maybe once a month. When we rounded the beach, though, we saw a boat arrive and four older white people step onto shore, carrying crates of beer and a picnic. I was shocked, partly because I had had a dream the night before that some tourists would show up on the island. They seemed to have a guide, who sat them down at a table near a shop on the beach. The women wore bikinis and the fat old men wore tiny swim trunks. I felt a little like they had invaded our island, and knew it was a sign of things to come. A few more rich tourists come around, and somebody is going to build a small beachfront hotel. More people will come, restaurants will be built, maybe a nicer hotel. Within a few years the whole thing that made this amazing to us, the hospitality, sleeping on the beach, the adobo from the only shop that sold cooked food, would all be but a memory as the island sells out to tourism. I have seen many places at varying stages of this destruction, but this was one of the few places I have been to that is at the brink of being “discovered”.
We circled the whole island, which probably took an hour, maybe more, and parked the boat. We went to the woman that sold the adobo and had lunch. As we ate, various people came by the shop to buy candies, cigarettes or instant noodles and have a chat with us. The day was getting absurdly hot, and it didn’t help that we had spent the last couple hours in the direct sunlight. We asked Martin if there was any freshwater swimming place back on the main island. He told us of a lake and a cave that had a swimming hole in it. We said we would go back to the island, but if he wanted to come with us, he was welcome. He seemed happy about this, so we packed up our things and he arranged our transport back to the main island. We thought we had gotten a good price on the way there, at 25 pesos each, but it turned out the standard rate is just five pesos (12 cents) per person.
Back on the other island, Martin arranged a couple of motorbike drivers to take us to this swimming cave. We didn’t found out until we arrived that Martin had not settled the price with them before we left. So, obviously they now wanted a huge sum. We had an idea of what it should have cost, but they were tripling that. Martin looked embarrassed, but was still too intimidated by these guys to stand up for us. When we finally got our price down to 60 pesos, they claimed not to have any change for our 100 peso note. Of course. Walking away without paying though, made the change mysteriously appear out of some unknown depth of their pockets.
We paid for Martin’s entrance into the cave and we descended into it’s narrow opening. The occasional light bulb along the ceiling, showing the way through the damp cave. Within minutes we came upon a surprisingly large fresh water pool with a shrine to Mary set up next to it. There were a couple of young Filipina girls there, splashing around and giggling. After hours in the arresting heat, and weeks of swimming in tepid saltwater, this fresh pool provided unfathomable relief. Most of the pool was lit, but there were a few corners that were completely dark. We basically just bobbed around in the water for close to an hour, before it was time to move on.
We paid for Martin’s motorbike and boat fare and bade him goodbye and good luck. Now it was up to us to arrange a moto-taxi back to the town where we had first landed on the island. Nobody would give us the same fare that we had originally paid to get there, so we just started walking. Sure, we didn’t plan to walk the 13 km, but there was no point hanging out around a bunch of moto-taxi drivers that wouldn’t give us a good deal. We would figure something out. A few of the drivers, stalked us along the road, but never offering us a price that we could agree with. Finally they left us alone, and it was up to our thumbs. It was a good thirty minutes of walking before we got our first ride. It was with a couple of young brothers with a motorbike and a side car. It wasn’t so much as a sidecar as it was a sidebox, or sidecage. The floor was a square wooden platform, with cage walls around the side. They were pretty confused by us, but we just showed that we wanted to get in their sidebox, and we were off. They only went a couple km, but it was a memorable ride.
It was a fairly long wait before the next vehicle passed, but when it did, we waved about enthusiastically. It was a pickup truck with about eight guys sitting in the bed. They said they were going all the way to Poro, our destination. It was pretty cramped back there. They said they didn’t speak English, but they seemed to just be a little modest. I asked if they were working and they confirmed my assumption. They pointed to a stack of large plastic basins. One of the men said, “We are going around the island selling these,” and then he paused to think of a good word to describe them, “dishwashers!” They all laughed.
When we arrived in Poro, they dropped us near the port. As we climbed out of the truck, we heard an American accented voice say, “Wow, looks like you guys are having fun!” Yes, that was true. We turned around to a see a white girl dressed pretty much like a typical hipster. She got right into conversation with us. We were surprised to see her, and we were caught off guard by her forward demeanor. She was in the Peace Corps, and she seemed like she hadn’t spoken to someone in English in quite a long time. She had a lot of catching up to do. We asked her if she knew when the boats left for Ponson Island, the tiny and most remote of the three Camotes islands. She laughed and said, “Oh! That’s a long story!” Basically, she had little faith that there were any sort of regular boats going there, but if we went to the other port, on the north end of this island we might find something. She also offered us a place to stay that night if we decided not to go north for that boat. She seemed eager to have visitors, but we decided to sally forth.
We walked for a while out of town, gathering information that there was a local bus that would come this way soon. Before it came, though, we got a flat bed semi truck to give us a ride. They were going around the island delivering sacks of animal feed. We sat in the back with two of the workers. They were stayed quiet during the 45 minute ride. It was only about 15 km until they dropped us off, but it left us just a couple km from the port town, Santa Rosa.
When the Captain arrived, he said we were welcome to stay at his house, since the local two-room community guesthouse was already occupied. He showed us to our room (a spare bedroom) and said that his daughter would make us dinner. She was close to our age and had a child. If I remember correctly, her husband is working abroad. She showed us a can of “American Corned Beef” and asked if we liked this. Well, of course. She made some sort of sauce with this, which turned out to be quite delicious over the rice. She also brought us a big bottle of Pepsi and a bucket of ice. We assumed that they had already eaten, but about twenty minutes after we were finished, while we were sitting outside, the daughter came and said that they would be eating now. I thought it kind of unique that although they were welcoming us into their home and being extremely hospitable, we were kept very separate. It was our first time staying with Filipinos, so we were not clear on some of the etiquette. We asked if, while they ate dinner, we could go on a walk to see the town. They found this to be a very bizarre request. First of all, they said it was dangerous and that we might get lost, which sounded absolutely absurd to us. We tried to explain that we would be fine and would be back in thirty minutes, maybe less. We should have just dropped it at the first sign of resistance, though, because now they decided it would be ok if we were chaperoned. We said that we would just stay home and that it was not a big deal. Now they were insisting it was no problem to find someone to take us around town. We seemed to have no choice. They brought some 14 year old girl that lived nearby and spoke some English to accompany us on our evening stroll. It felt completely ridiculous, and we regretted even asking to go out in the first place.
The girl was sweet though, and we had a good conversation with her along the way. After just five or ten minutes, though, we said we should go back now. We didn’t want to be troubling her because the Captain had demanded her to stay with us. Now she seemed really worried. “You want to go back?! Now?! But we haven’t gone far enough!” It almost seemed like she had been told that she had satisfy our deep desires to see the whole town. She seemed much more at ease when we said that we wanted to see the port. It was a thirty minute walk, and it was probably not a bad thing that we knew where it was for the next morning. We had learned that there would be a boat leaving at 5 AM the next morning, so it was good to know how far away and where it was.
Back at the house, it seemed that we had been gone too long. By this time, at around 8:30, the family seemed ready for bed and waiting for our return. We asked if we would be able to leave at 4 AM, since their gate would be locked. They now said that there, in fact, was no 5 AM boat, and we would have to go later in the morning and charter a boat. They told us the normal price to make the 4 km crossing, which was more than we wanted to pay, but not unreasonable. We weren’t even sure if we believed them. What had changed in the last hour? We were so confused by this family that we wouldn’t have been shocked to find out that they just didn’t want us to walk to the port in the dark, or that they didn’t want to wake up at 4 AM to open the gate for us. Either way, there was little we could do.
The next morning they made us breakfast of tapsilog (rice, eggs, meat) and coffee. Then we thanked them and headed for the port. We started negotiating the price for the boat, hoping to get it for 300 pesos each ($7). They resisted for a while (we were adamant, at that point that we would pay no more than 200 pesos) but suddenly they said, ok, 200 pesos. We didn’t understand, at first, where this miraculous price came from, but then we saw the boat approaching from the other island. Basically, this guy who was coming to drop off passengers on this island was expecting to return with an empty boat, so if he could get a few hundred pesos out of us, that would be free money for him on the way back. I assume that the first man we were negotiating with was getting a cut of our money for fixing him up with us. It was fine for us though. I think we all won.
Ponson Island was a preview of what I expected was to come on little Tulang Island, where we stayed with our friend Martin. Just a couple years ago, when our guidebook was written, there was no accommodation on this island, and they suggested the beach in Kawit was a good place to camp. This was our plan, but as we arrived, we discovered the beach front was now taken up by a modest resort with bungalows. A man approached us, asking if we needed a place to stay. When we said no, he asked if we needed a mototaxi. We were somewhat disappointed, so we decided just to cross the island to its main port and get out of there. We walked out of the little village, found some shade and sat down, hoping that some day a car might pass us. It was a thirty or forty minute wait before something came. It was a large truck that said on the side “Emergency Government Vehicle”. Apparently it was a vehicle that would provide an emergency government. We climbed into the back and started cruising north. Everyone we passed seemed to do a double take when they saw us riding back there. The attention was kind fun. It was only about ten km from one end of the island to the other, but the road wasn’t in the best shape and it took about half an hour, maybe more. We arrived at the port, just an hour before the next boat would be leaving to the large island of Leyte.
Hitchin' on Ponson Island.
Although it looked like it could get stormy, the boat ride was calm, and we arrived quicker than expected.
We didn’t spend too many days in the Camotes Islands, but they were incredible. It is really one of those places that I will keep in my pocket, for when I need a quick escape to somewhere perfect.
You're living the life man! We're all living through you!
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