Boracay

Leaving Tagbilarin I hopped on the back of a scooter and sped off to the port to catch a speed boat back to the big city of Cebu.

Daniel had given me several Peace Corps contact numbers of people in Cebu, but I opted to have some quiet time to myself.

After checking into a cheap hotel with air conditioning, I jumped in a taxi bound for SM City Mall to speak with a travel agent about domestic flights to Boracay. I booked a flight from Cebu to Boracay and a flight from Boracay to Manila.

Once all my travel arrangments were taken care of and I could rest easy, I decided to kill some time at the mall's cinema and watch The Island. I figured it would be suiting.

Early the next morning I took another taxi ride to the Cebu airport and boarded a small 30 seater propeller plane for the scenic puddle jump to Caticlan, and then I took a small outrigger boat to the small island of Boracay.


SouthEast Asian Airlines

It could be said that Boracay is the Panama City Beach of the Philippines. Tourism is a bit extreme because of the 9km long strip of white sandy beach lined with great restaurants, bars, dance clubs, and hotels.

I jumped out of the outrigger at Station 2 right in the geographic center of the beach and walked about 10 yards with my backpack on before I was escorted into a small hotel room across from the beach and next to a lively nightclub.

Everything seemed set, so I made my way to the beach just in time to watch the sun set.


Sunset

On the beach many artists were making giant, intricate sand castles. As people would come to admire their work, they'd ask for donations. I asked one artist if he did this everyday, he said yes. I asked him how long he worked on one sand castel, he said about 6 hours.


Sandcastle art

At night the sand castles are primed for viewing by placing candles inside and around the out side. It made for quite a spectacle.


Sandcastle by night

My first full day in Boracay I spent on the beach finishing the book I'd brought with me, Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachlor Pad.

The second day I decided to charter an outrigger, called a bangca, to tour me around the island.


Bangca

The tour itself was nothing special, but I chose to ride on the bow of the bangca for most of the day. It was really beatiful riding underneath parasails, next to sailboats & jetskis, watching people get pulled on banana boats & some contraption called a flyfish that actually got airborn when jumping the wakes.

First, we went to some small caves around the south side of the island called Crystal Cove, and then my guide took me to a nice section of coral to do some snorkeling. Last, we went to a smaller beach on the north side of the island to get a bite to eat, then back to my beach chair.


My foot

That night I walked down near Station 1 to an interesting little bar called Red Pirate. I actually met a guy from Dalton, Georgia named Jonathan who's working in Iraq as a firefighter.

He tried to tell me things there are pretty bad, but not as bad as the media makes it out to be. He said many locals are happy to have the American military there, and we're making progress building schools, hospitals, etc.

For my third day, Jonathon talked me into doing some scuba diving. We went just off the coast to a wreck called Camia. The boat was perfectly level underwater, and was perfect for wreck diving.


Polluted pink sky

That night I went to bed early because I had an early flight back to Manila.