An actual vacation

I don't remember the last time I lay on a sandy beach and did nothing for a few hours. The concept is totally alien for someone trained from birth to always keep busy and out of trouble. Though there's a beach located an hour's drive north of my home town, I travelled thousands of kilometres across the world, and took a tiny bamboo boat across Pacific Ocean waters to get here:

Malcapuya Island in the province of Palawan, Philippines. It's one of the many Calamianes Islands accessed through the resort town of Coron.

On Monday, January 23, my trusty travel companion Rupert De Jesus and I caught a 45 minute flight from Manila to Busuanga airport on the island province of Palawan. From there we took a 30 minute shuttle ride (150php) to Momita's Lodge, an ancestral family home of the friendly but shrewdly businesslike owner, Momita. A small misunderstanding of our room confirmation was quickly resolved as luckily there were other rooms available. For our five-night stay we ended up in comfortable, air conditioned multi-bed rooms. The comfort rooms were clean with water buckets and dippers. Momita's is central, a block from a bakery, the central plaza, shops, and one street over from the Calamianes Xpedition Eco-tours run by Al and Mae Linsangan.

Rupert had heard about Momita's and the Eco tours through friends who had been to Coron before, so we had investigated them before we arrived. All we had to do when we got there was figure out which tour we wanted to do and when.

Got to run out momentarily for dinner in Makati with - of all people, Ron Cantiveros and Larry Vikars of Winnipeg who were here to build a village in the south. So here's a brief run-down of my week with Rupert in Coron:

Turn your head sideways to view the summit cross since I can't rotate  this photo. Deal.

Monday - arrived, settled, hiked up Mt. Tapyas. No big feat. Stairs lead all the way to the paved summit where stands a huge cross that lights up at night. Pathways lead to two pagodas, one affording a nice view of the sunset.

Found a nice place to sit on Mt. Tapyas overlooking Coron Town. Photo by Rupert De Jesus.

Sunset in Coron.

Next...Tuesday. So little time to blog!