Family time in Cagayan De Oro

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It was my Lola's (Grandmother's) 85th birthday on the 30 November so I made my way to Cagayan De Oro to join the celebrations with the rest of the family who had gathered from all over The Philippines. All my dad's brothers and sisters were there with the exception of one who is living in Saudi at the moment, but it was great catching up with relatives I hadn't seen since I was a baby. Lola's actual birthday celebrations were hilarious and was designed more so for all the kids (my cousins' children)...there are so many of them. My uncle arranged for a party host to come along and play some games with the kids and for a Winnie the Pooh mascot to come along. Seeing Lola receive flowers from Winnie the Pooh was a pretty 'special' moment. :o)

The following day we were all up early to go white water rafting. I have been twice before on previous visits, but never with all my family so I was eager to get going. I shared a raft with my younger cousins and their mum and dad. They were cracking jokes all morning...I think our guide was getting annoyed that we weren't paying much attention to him. We navigated 30 rapids successfully. Only once my cousin RA fell out. I was sitting at the front of the raft and I remember turning around after hitting some major rapids and all of a sudden RA was gone. It took several attempts and two people to hoist him back into the raft whilst we were all buckled over in fits of laughter (he's quite a big boy). I jumped ship a couple of times just for the hell of it. Where's the fun in staying in the raft the whole time? At the end of the 3 hour journey we came to graduation rock...a 15 ft rock in the middle of a grade 2 rapids. My cousin Rico and I were the first out of the raft climbing to the top of the rock. I was feeling pretty cocky about the whole thing saying I was going to jump, but the feelings were oh so different once I was teetering on the edge looking down at the rapids. I had jumped this rock a couple of years ago, but the water level was much higher on that occassion. Anyway, after a couple of false starts and several hundred deep breaths I jumped successfully. Looking up at the rock from the water I wondered what all the fuss was about, but that's easy to say that once you've jumped I know. It was a cool adrenaline rush. That evening everyone was knackered and headed off to bed early, except for me and my cousin Roxanne who stayed up playing boggle. I thought I was good, but damn...she kicked my arse!

The next morning it was time to pack my bags and catch a plane back to Manila accompanied by some other members of the family. As always the farewells were very emotional on my part, but hopefully I can return to Cagayan soon.

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