A Ferry Ride

As ever, my email is full of travel deal offers. Nowadays, very unlikely of me, I proceed to deleting them instead of rummaging over them in search of a fitted deal for my frequent family trips. A huge change  has gone over my family this year, which technically glued my feet inside our home to solely take care of my girls. I'm parenting 24/7. Alright, not fair to claim the credit all by myself. Husband actually, has never gone. He's still very much around. Thu' not so much physical but definitely 100% "around". In all aspect..


 
... virtually.everyday.7/24 during working days and yeah 24/7 on non-working days.

But him not physically around has put limit, if not totally ceased our little family adventures. If before with him around, he had already put limitations to what/where only was allowable, now I don't want to send worries to him by taking the girls on trip without him. If you're a family friend, you should know how oa protected this dad is to us.


 

But malls bored me to death. I don't shop. I mean shopping doesn't amuse me. Buying pricey bags, shoes, clothes would just end my day with heavy heart for slashing my wallet and after all would find no connection at all to these "lonely mom's toys". Long gone are my materialistic years. In my marriage and mom's life , a new matured me has emerged.

Now spot the difference of this photo of me and that of me in the previous one above. short and long hair? erk# haha. Seriously. Nothing has elated me so much as a nature trip. Need I say more?

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But for the meantime, I got to put my favorite activity on hold. While we are still in transition.  
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Meanwhile, traveling through my antiquated photos fill in the gaps.
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Ok, not that old actually. Just a tad over a  year old. Photos I hadn't posted yet but were somehow promised.
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Ready or not, let's go for a boat ride in Mindanao...

I never got bored traveling by water. I hail from a country with 7,107 islands. I practically have no choice but to have fun riding a boat to have reached some of them. # never as  pilot thu', haha. I just took the driver seat while he was still out.

 Mostly, I rode a local version of a boat called a "banca". A passenger boat/ferry  like that in the above photo is a typical boat used to reach a certain island here in our country. You can't simply jump out of an airplane to set foot in an island here. You have to add on a boat ride upon exiting an airport gate.



The interior is usually like this. Open air where passengers could enjoy the view of the sea. This kind is mostly used for short trip to a particular island coming from the mainland. Like a 30minutes to an hour long ride.

Personally, one of my favorite past times while riding a banca is to stare the parts of the boat which are called the "outriggers". I easily get lost in watching them slapping the blue sea water, until it's time to alight.




That.. in the absence of a perfect blue sea and whitish blue cottony sky. This was like less than 30 minutes away from the mainland Davao city.

Passing numerous islets in the middle of the sea  made this boat ride interesting.

More so when we passed near and had  better look of the islets. Look at the slides. It would be fun to make a stop here and swim. I almost forgot, this one wasn't an island hopping ride.I was bound to alight in one of the famous island resorts in the country.

Approaching my destination, resorts here and there were visible already.

However, a sad fact of being a third world country doesn't limit in the streets of the mainlands of our country. Right there in the middle of the sea were the versions of the street children/beggars. Throw a coin and they would swim deep to catch it. I don't know, but instead of getting entertained, my mother heart pitied these kids risking their lives to earn a living. Well, to console myself, I reckoned they must be excellent swimmers anyway.

I knew I was about to alight already when this beautiful facade of the resort appeared right on my very eyes.




How about staying a night or two in one of those pretty stilt cottages..

Well, have I mentioned that it was at The Pearl Farm in Samal Island, Davao? It was. Hop on there.

"thy sea is so great and my boat is so small"

For me, a day in the beach is incomplete without a little boat ride.

Look how tiny our boat was. The size of the boat was relative to our small budget, haha. We didn't bother to avail more decent boat cos this one was enough for us. We were only three passengers and it was already nearing to sunset which meant we could only stay in the sea not beyond 2 hours . Also, it meant a nearby destinations only.

We were by the way at Nasugbu, Batangas. I didn't have much expectations on the sea sights., but a boat ride is a past time I always enjoy and didn't mind the absence of sceneries in this side of Luzon.




I guess it is that I was in when one lowers his expectations, that's when he sees great in small things attitude that made me actually enjoyed this little boat ride.

I thought this trivial rock formation, was nice and well, added texture to the plain Nasugbu shores.

Remember that we only floated around near and didn't have time to go farther which I supposed got more scenic islands.

Already it was surprising that nonetheless we were able to score some interesting photos of random structures by the sea.

We made a short stop-over in a shore with better beach and water.




Swam a little. .

. . did some fruit snacking. .




. .and off to the sea again.




private resort

. . another private resort. This one is Canyon Cove.

and a beautiful photo taken by older daughter who stayed mostly behind the lens during this trip.
Not bad at all.

Bird's Eye View of Coron, Palawan

When I looked down  _ I knew right away that I was in for bundles of nature treats. Landscapes were uniquely interesting  like art works.

Assemblages of islands were icing the ocean. The bird's eye view was so fascinating, I was surprised to realize that it was raining when we touched down Busuanga airport.

PAL provided umbrellas for everyone.

There were teasers of what the dive sites here in Coron could offer. They said, this province was rarely or  never visited by strong typhoons. Even rains were only short affairs.

True enough when we went out of the airport the rain stopped.The weather cooperated well throughout the duration of our stay

Already, the (30 mins) trip to Coron Town from Busuanga airport was loaded with scenery. Green meadows of grasses exported from Australia ( courtesy of the past Marcos regime) gave off a feeling of being out of P.I. The long roads were only accommodating  hotel transfer vans and pedestrian cows.  





We reached our hotel ( Coron Gateway), the newest and most expensive in town. This would be our first accommodation as we planned to hotel hop every night of our four days stay. We were not rushing so we didn't plunge- in to island tours right away. We settled and feasted on our first sight of the Calamianes Group of Islands from our windows and terrace.

Borawan Island

Locals of Padre Burgos had fed me that Borawan came from combining Boracay and Palawan.
They said, the island has the rock fascinating formations of Palawan and the white sand of Boracay and pristine waters of both. Wow!Sounded too good to be true.



Not easily bought, hmm.. let me see..
From the resort we were staying ( here ), we hired a boat that would bring us to Borawan and brought us back to the resort. We rented it for P500.




Approaching the island, I could sense the truth of the locals' claim.




My excitement grew further as we got nearer...









omg I was loving what was initially showing.. amazing rocks and a promise of white sand!




Well, our kids were more excited than I was. They jumped out of the boat before it was even properly docked. They were excited about the floor embedded with gazillions shells.




And me? I went gaga over the fascinating rock formations! omg I never expected them here in Padre Burgos. I don't expect to find something exquisite in places so accessible so near to Manila. In Palawan, yes!  But here in Bondoc Peninsula? I was pleasantly surprised!




Look at this wall of thousands rocks (photo).

full of characters..





This one is another beauty. But when we tried to sit under it, we didn't like the smell_ urine smell.




Available were nipa huts for daytime and overnight rent.








Across were other interesting islands to explore..




We didn't stay long and headed to our next stop_ Dampalitan Island.