A Swiss Family Robinson Experience

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It was time to leave Manila, and after breakfast we said goodbye to Michael and Chris, and took a taxi to the bus station.

Bus travel has an extra element of challenge to it here because there is no central terminal, and each bus company operates their own terminals, and each company has terminals scattered across the city, with each one serving different destinations. There are a few main areas where there is a high concentration of bus companies, so you head there based on which city your trying to get to.

And have I mentioned the traffic in Manila? I have? Well, I'm going to mention it again. It's bad. Even in midday, it probably took the bus two hours just to get out of Manila. Traffic really is incredible here. And Manila is also huge.

Finally, we hit the expressway and it was clear sailing for a while. But all good things must come to an end, and there's not a whole lot of expressway in the Philippines, and we ran out of expressway and were back on two lane highways. It seemed like the towns never stopped, so it was pretty slow travelling.

But finally we arrived, and we arrived in San Felipe, and had to make our way to the hostel. For the first time, we were confronted with one of the Philippines ubiquitous modes of transportation: the tricycle.

The tricycles are bikes with sidecars. They can be either bicycles or motorbikes, and it depends on how far you're going and how fast you need to get there. Or rather what's available in a town depends on how far the average trip is.

Ours was the motorbike variety. And these are not factory made units. They are custom fabricated sidecars that are welded to the frame of motorbikes. They're all a little different, and the owners customize the appearance. I suppose decoration would be a form of advertising. So they're not necessarily pretty, but they seem pretty sturdy, and they will hold two adults and bags in a pinch. Or an entire Filipino family, as we often saw... They're not built to be spacious, and would still be tight for the average Filipino adults, so my 6'2" frame was curved over a bit more than normal. And we couldn't really see out the front because it was all steel with just a tiny piece of plexiglass to see out of. So we couldn't see where we were going really.

It was quite a lengthy trip, and we plied our way gingerly down the sandy side streets before being dropped off right at our hostel.

We'd found this hostel on the internet when I'd searched “hostels in Luzon”. There's not much for hostels in the Philippines in general, and outside of Manila we didn't really find anything listed on this island except for the two locations of The Circle hostel, one of which would be our home for the next couple of nights.

And from the pictures on the internet, I was pretty excited, and I was not to be disappointed. The best way I can describe it is that it's the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse. The bunkhouse is up high on wooden stilts, and lots of it is made from bamboo. Each bunk bed is enclosed in a mosquito net, and you sleep under a thatched grass/palm roof. Or if you prefer, you can stay in hammocks down below over the beach. It's just awesome.

The hostel has a very relaxed vibe. This is a haven for surfers, rastas, and hippies alike. Stress, in any form, will simply not be encountered here.

We dropped our bags, chose our beds and went for a walk. It was too dark to make our way between the rows of houses to the beach successfully, even though we're only about 200m away from the water and could hear the waves, so that will be tomorrow's conquest.

We bought some food at the cafe across from our hostel, and chatted with the shop owners while they prepped it. They asked if we were surfers, I said no, but that I might become one. The woman and her husband were originally from Kansas and moved back recently. Awesome people.

While we ate or dinner and drank our beer, we had a conversation about crops. I'm not exactly sure why we were talking about it, mostly because I was distracted by the mere fact that we were two Alberta kids sitting on a patio in the Philippines talking about crops. And neither of us comes from a farming background really. Vanessa's grandparents farm, and her uncle has taken over, but that doesn't qualify us to talk about crops. Ah, crops...

I'm so distracted by this realization, that I can't remember what we were talking about exactly or why, but I do remember commenting that you can stand in places in Saskatchewan in the middle of farmers fields and not see a farmhouse nearby because the farms are so big and it's so flat and open and that this is shocking. Anyway...

... back to bunkhouse to sleep.

Woke up after a good nights sleep to the sounds of a group of our hostel mates singing. They were good singers!

We got up to read our books, and they invited us to join them for breakfast! They'd prepared a feast and were happy to share. It was awesome. I don't know where these awesome people came from (Manila, actually), but I'm sure glad they found us.

This super friendly group of friends also invited us to join them on the beach for some swimming, and we were not about to turn them down. We had a pretty great time messing around in the water, building sand castles, and so on. It was a good time on the beach.

But our friends had to head out, so we went back to the hostel while they packed up their car. We said goodbye, but exchanged contact info. Maybe we'll be able to meet up again in Manila in a few weeks before we fly back to Hong Kong.

The rest of the day was pretty easy. And not just for us. There was a cat in the hostel that slept on the steps all day. I don't think it moved once. I could see it breathing if I stared at it long enough, so it wasn't dead. Just lazy...

We went to the beach (which was almost totally deserted, by the way) to try and catch the sunset, but it was too cloudy. Then it started to rain, and we had to run back to where we'd put our bags to keep them from getting soaked!

Then dinner, some beer, some reading in a hammock, and then bed. We were pretty much alone in the hostel that night.

All in all it was a pretty cool place. So cool, in fact, that our next stop will be the other Circle hostel further up the coast in San Juan. Actually, Kat (one of the girls in the group of friends) says her mom owns that location, and she says it's even better. I accused her of being biased, but I still trust her. It's quite a long distance away, and it will be slow travel on two lane highways, and we'll have to change buses a few times, so we'll just see how far we can get in a day.

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Photos

Ironman Mermaid
Or Iron Merman?

Just Playing in the Sand.
Grown Ups!