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Published: March 30th 2008
We said goodbye to White Beach's giant inflatable beer bottle at the ungodly time of 7am and took tricycles to the main town in the area. Here, we squished into a jeepney and travelled for two painful hours before changing to a minibus which took us all the way to Roxas, where the boat went from. Amazingly, the transitions had been absolutely seemless so we were making excellent time. We saw a sign in the ticket office saying that the ferry to Caticlan left at 2pm, giving us an hour and a half to eat lunch before boarding, which we were quite thankful for. However, when buying the ticket we were told that the time had changed and it was leaving in just 30 minutes.
We rushed over to Sheila's restaurant and had some very unappetising, cold, ready cooked food (sorry, mum!) and then boarded the ferry. For an hour we sat in port until we finally left at the original stated time of 2pm - craziness! Luckily, it was quite fun as there was a large group of local boys who were making money by diving into the water from the top of the boat to retrieve coins that
the tourists threw in (all local tourists apart from the four of us!)
After four hours, we finally pulled into the tiny, scruffy town of Caticlan and decided to wait until the next morning (the first day of the holiday!) to head over to Boracay, presuming there would be better odds of getting accommodation then. We walked around town looking for a room and the first ones we looked at were grim prison cells. Soon after, we found one for the same price with brightly painted cheery rooms, and checked in right away. We went to a local restaurant and had cheap beer and deliciously moist rotisserie chicked and fried rice (practically the only thing on the menu) for dinner until getting kicked out of the resturant at 8:30pm, closing time in Caticlan. Ominously, the restaurant had been showing local news and Boracay was featuring big, showing scenes of huge crowds on the beach - scary! We got the impression we were heading into mass chaos!
Scott and I managed to find internet while Gary and Milena found even cheaper beer! (a chip off the old block...) We went to join them for a drink at 9:30pm but
"Tricycles" are a common form of transport in the Philippines.
Some can fit 7 passengers inside the side car, and of course there's always room for more hanging on the back!were told the bar was closing, so instead headed around town to find ice-cream. It was an impossible task, so we instead headed back to our guest house and sat in the corridor drinking a can of beer each. We were quite happy until we went to go to bed and Scott and I found two huge cockroaches in our room and one in the corridor. Gary came to the rescue and valiantly trapped the one in the corridor under a glass, and killed the two in our room with his flip flop (thank goodness they are not Buddhists here!), but that was after a lot of screaming and tears from both Milena and I. This is their third room, and so far all have had cockroaches!
Tired from sleeping with the lights on all night, we got an early boat over to Boracay. We were pleased to find that, contrary to the horror stories, there actually were empty rooms in Boracay, and they actually didn't charge 5,000 pesos. We found some decent rooms with a bit of luxury - air-conditioning - but the crucial part was that they turned out not to have roaches!
We immediately liked
For mum again...
...sorry mum, we ate here before catching our ferry and let's just say the food wasn't exactly great, unlike your home cooking! :) our end of the beach on Boracay. Everything is set back from the beach by a sand-covered pathway lined with palm trees. The restaurants and bars are chilled out driftwood-style, and the accommodation is skillfully hidden from sight for the most part. The beach was also nice and white and not too crowded. So, where on earth did they film all the crazy footage for the newscast? We soon found out when we took a long walk to the middle of the beach. It was pure bedlam, with wall-to-wall local tourists clambering around the free mobile phone promotions and the videoke bars. Not our scene at all. It made us appreciate our chilled out end all the more!
Scott and I did a dive one day to a site famous for having sharks. We saw one adult white tip reef shark, and four babies all resting in a crack, plus lots of soft coral and fish. Apart from that, though, the underwater life was quite disappointing, with no decent snorkelling offshore. Still, the beach was nice and relaxing, and Gary and Milena especially needed that after coming straight from work.
The plan was to next head to pandan
Whoooo!
Local kids jump into the water from the roof of the ferry to retrieve coins thrown in by tourists, but also to prove their manhood! island together, but Gary and Milena have decided to stay longer in Boracay, so we are going to go on. Hopefully we can meet up with them again soon...
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Mum
non-member comment
brotherly love
Hi you two, nice to see you together, only wish we could be there too! Hope all 4 of you have a great time, love mum and dad xx