To flood or not...

So last week was a bit of fun. Typhoon followed typhoon followed typhoon. So it was looking like we were going to miss out our opportunity to spend an extended weekend at Puerto Galera. Bummer cuz by all accounts, Coco Beach Resourt sounds like a bit of heaven.

However, we managed to get into a bit of an adventure anyway. It was looking (or maybe we were just projecting) that there was going to be a break in the weather for the weekend afterall. So at a last minute call, we decided to pile into a van and head out to the Hundred Islands National Park.

Located some 200km north and west of Manila it only took us 5 hours in our comissioned "coaster" aka the Nissan van.

The official Philippines Tourism web site notes "Foremost of the attractions [of the province of Pangasinan] are the “Hundred Islands,” a long-popular group of islands and islets, looking like giant turtles, scattered off the coast of Lucap in Alaminos. Now develop (sic), they lie ensconced in the 1,844-hectare nature and recreational park called the Hundred Islands National Park.

"Scattered off the coast of Lucap in Alaminos are islands and islets looking like giant turtles comprising the 1,844-hectare nature and recreational park. On many points between the islets, the waters are shallow, thus ideal for swimming and snorkeling. The Quezon Island has picnic sheds, toilets, and view decks. Children’s Island is for camping activities while the Governor’s Island has facilities for accommodation. Reservations are accepted at the Public Assistance Center where motorized bancas for trips to the islands are hired. Lucap is approximately 3 kilometers away from the town proper of Alaminos.

So there we were. Our organizer and chief coordinator was a 28 year old Julah. Working as the office manager for a German NGO she is the highly skilled and competent legs which keeps the operation running. A Filipina, she has a huge smile and plenty of giggles to go around. A master of many languages, and a memory like a bear-trap she is hard to confound. Her best friend is along for the ride as well. Mena, short for Carmena, (in the RP there is not a person who does not carry some sort of nickname – at the very least a nickname can be a diminutive of the real name) is a tall, slender drink of water with a closed-lipped knowing smile and a sparkle in her eye. A currency trader by day, she is a vodka hound by night and can tell the difference between brands with her eyes closed. She has raised herself by hook and by crook up from the poverty of the provinces and now can afford to spend upwards of 2000 pesos in a nights frolic and then taxi herself home to her apartment in Makati City (the primary ‘high-end’ community of Manila). Julah and Mena are as close as two giggling jr. highschool girls in spite of their acknowledged opposite natures. If Julah likes beer not so for Mena. If Mena likes pizza, Julah will search out some other fare. It appears that there is no agreement on any single item…and maybe that is the strength in the relationship – opposite is as opposite does. Simple. No quarreling and competition over juicy commodities.

As a pretext for the trip, Julah has young German interns flitting in and out of the NGO on a regular basis. Today we get to meet three of them. Her “kids” she says in spite of the row of complaining for such amorous affectation. Her ‘babies’ include 23 year-old Andrew (the light in Julah’s eyes…at least for this trip) who is a young whippersnapper of a Fascist Autocrat. With three weeks left in-country he is currently studying Spanish, while wearing a MP3 player, and dreaming about meeting up with his girlfriend to be too interested in the surroundings (however, to be sure, such unapproachable conditions do not slow Julah down in her attempts at bonding). Jorg is the youngest at 22. He is a law student working at the German Embassy. Tall and thin he has a hawk nose preparing to fatten and redden. He doesn’t say much, particularly when Julah starts commenting about his “wonderful legs” all long and fuzzy-like. Turns out that Julah doesn't like "chicken legs", a common commodity on Filipino men. Jorg sometimes makes some comments about the difference between cultures of Germany and the RP but is still struggling to make sense of everything. He is getting paid by the Embassy during his internship so money is not an object…that being said, he is quickly falling into the ‘expat zone’ where beer eases loneliness, boredom and culture clashes. He likes his beer.

Wolf is a little older at 26, but seems to have a much more mature perspective than the others is an interesting fellow. Having finished his communications degree he felt himself a bit lost. So he decided to re-connect with a friend and come to the Philippines and chill out. While he was here, he decided that there was some potential material in the May elections sufficient for him to write his Thesis. That he did, with some living assistance from Julah’s NGO, and he successfully wrote, defended, and published from the Condo building across the street from my place, here in Ortigas Center. Life is now a lark for him as he has now no outstanding obligations, and a ready packaged eligibility requirement in the can for his Masters studies in the ensuing school year.

Sara and I round out the crew. It is a mixed- bag of hammers and Jun (short for Junior, there is one in every family regardless of birth name), the driver, is stuck with a boatload of kids on a joy-ride. We didn’t get too far out of Manila when the whining started. Gotta pee. Gotta eat. Gotta sit beside Andrew. Andrew had to study Spanish. Holy cow. Then we hit the “flood zone”. Had we known that the province we were visiting had been listed as being a state of emergency we would not have made the effort I suspect. Nevertheless here we were…sitting in a long line of traffic facing a roadway under water. Andrew was demanding that we make a rush at it…Jun was not so convinced. In our small van the engine is located under the driver’s seat so a flooding (in every sense of the word) is a simple probability. The German commands of go go go were met with the Filipino “universal yes” and we remained at a standstill. But then a rush of oncoming traffic indicated that fording is a possibility. So here we go…. One flood zone was followed quickly by another and then later another. But this last one was a bit sketchier. It looked like even this one would stop busses. And then it started raining. Bad signs were about. The local kids were angling for cash – such entrepreneurial spirit is rampant – and we were told that he water was waist deep and that they could push us for…say…300 pesos. These stories were contradicted by other locals suggesting that the water was only 30 cm deep (the margin for us in our little van). Confusion reigned; to go or not to go? Meanwhile the mouthpiece of Andrew kept on chewing commands “go go go stay in the middle, go go go, step on it…” Julah, now comfortably reverted into junior high first dance mode, was completely ineffectual in providing translation, decision making or planning decisions. Eventually we renegotiated a rate for the push (to the immense happiness of the boys who live in underwater homes) and off we went. We become a motorboat for a bit, but as the water inched up the grill and the doorsills, we remained dry and resisted any tendency to be swept away. It turned out to be less water than described (quelle surprise) and so while we paid off the boys, on Jun's recommendation we deducted some cash for misrepresentation. And for the fact that we didn’t get any real pushing.

This excitement was followed by another bout of excitement about going to McDonalds over Jolibees (a Filipino fast-food joint equivalent to, and more competitive than McDs) for lunch. Gosh. We still had to get to the boat terminal, negotiate a ferry crossing and get to one of the islands. It was a long days journey to be sure.

Eventually we were able to organize a ferry. Yahoo a 20 min ride in a boat was going to take me to a white sand beach, the sooner the better. But as we were climbing onto the boat somebody yelled at us to take some food. Food? It is not a resort? Only an empty house we had commissioned for 2400 pesos for one nite? Yikes. Dumbfounded, we piled off the ferry and hit the nearest package store. Cans of tuna adobo, Coke lite, and waiwai noodles was the fare du jour. At least we could save money on food, eh?

We hit the beach running just as the rain started falling. No electricity in this mansion past its prime, it was hot, humid and stuffy and it didn’t take long for my chest hair to curl up into ringlets. It was going to be a long night with 6 beds and 7 people, three natural languages, 3 culture zones, several economic strata and a freekin’ cat in heat. Meowwww.

Located on a bit of a flat spit of land on Govenor’s Island, the house was a 2-bedroom affair. High ceilings dominated the living/eating area, but the space remained cozy with a couch that wrapped around three walls. We were shown the simple galley kitchen by the live aboard caretakers of the island. And later, after it was established that “the generator wasn’t working” the boys were kind enough to provide a propane lantern for us to cook and eat avec lumiere. A little extra heat from the lantern was sufficient to reduce the overwhelming humidity in the abode; but it didn’t do anything for the air conditioning system. And since it gets dark at 1830 it was just all around fun.

Supper became a mixed bag of noodles and rice with pureed meat substitute, sardines and hot sauce. But it is the company which makes the meal right? By this time, Andrew had broken whatever will Julah had over him, and was sleeping/hiding. Jorg was thoroughly tanked and wondering aimlessly and muttering to himself. The two girls took off to go for a swim (Filipino for wade around ankle deep) and giggle like pre-pubescent girls.

But the weather cleared and a wonderful bright ‘next to’ full moon came up. The broken generator became a bonus as the night was quietly still with the odd fish jump and wave splashing on the rocks. By this time, Jorg was crashed on the beach and I was mooning over the moon with a half-bottle of local rum in my gut. Sara was yakkin to Wolf, and Julah was looking for Jorg. Julah finally found him on the beach and pulled up a blanket with him. Later, say around 0400 (about the time I had to go on a cat hunting expedition) I noticed that Mena had left the doublebed with Sara and had joined Jorg and Julah on the beach. Everybody else was crashed in the various beds so the under-capacity of the beds turned out to be a non-issue. Even I had spent some time on the picnic table and on the sofa instead of a bed in an effort to find relief from the heat.

The sun rose earlier than I needed it to and so I gathered my possessions and few scraps of food and a couple of Jorg’s unopened beer and headed out to visit the island. It was a small one so I fired some pictures from the peak lookout and then spotted a beach… It turned out to be the nicest beach on the island, sandy and free from acres of dead coral in a little protected alcove. I peeled off my accoutrements, dug out a beer and waded into the pool. Heaven is quietly dripping sunrays on a beach, soaking and floating with a beer in hand, allowing sand to get into yer cracks.

Then the Koreans invaded my little beach. Seven students of English down from Bagio (7 hr trip north) ran their boat up the beach, piled out, snorkeled, flapped about, fought, threw coconuts at each other, dumped their garbage, gave me some candy in recompense and split. It was forty minutes of terror and bruit in my heaven. I was left agitated and scared and no longer au naturale. Stink. Just in time for me to catch the ferry back for a very quiet and uneventful ride home.

I tried to talk to Julah on Wednesday, as the organizer of the Manila Hotel event. I was dismissed with a terse “I’m busy” and that is that. Notch up another one...