Friday, June 24
I got up at 5 a.m. Just naturally. My bio-rhythm was a little messed up, I am sure, but I will take it if I am getting up in the morning, when I should. It had stopped raining, and I eagerly got ready to run and got my camping bag ready for tonight’s Malcapuya stop.
Sabrina got up and joined me at 6, and we ran down to the dock by the public market. There were boats docked for the day, with boats in various states of readiness and cleanliness. As I ran down the streets, I noted the eateries with breakfasts. I passed one with champorado and puto. And another one with different viands (side dishes) and champorado. So excited to take the kids back to it later. They’d wanted some of the chocolate porridge.
I got lost a little – okay, a lot – all the while thinking what a bad mom I was for letting my daughter run unaccompanied in Coron. She beat me by 5 minutes at the guest house, thank goodness. All safe and sound.
As I got back to the guest house, I ran into the proprietor of the guest house – Tatay Ruben Pe. He is related to the Pes of our family line. So fun! I hope we can connect on Sunday.
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Our tour guide Elee came to the house. He is mabungisngis, smiling a lot, a happy-go-lucky fellow whom we all immediately liked. He gets down to business but is very nice bout it. We told him we would just go down to the dock and find them.
Finding a boat at the dock is no simple thing, we discovered, but there was a man who was standing middlish of the pack, and I had the notion to wave at him. Which was an accurate notion. It was Renlee Cubelo, the founder or one of the co-founders of Kawil Tours.
I found their company after doing a search on Trip Advisor and reading other blogs. Eventually, I chose them because they touted their expertise on Culion, which is a side trip we wanted.
Renlee wore a jaunty musician like hat and his smile is wide and welcoming. Then he mentioned other crew names and their jobs. About a half dozen in all. They all seem really nice, which is the hope when we are to spend the next five days or so with them. As we pulled out of the dock, I am thankful we went with them, instead of some other boat with an unknown quality, or others with cleanliness issues. Their white boat sparkles like their smiles.
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Banana Island Resort
Just chilling while waiting for our tour guides to fix lunch. We go all the way around the world to the Philippines and still can’t get away from the Grantsville’s Dead Dog legacy. At Banana Island, named for its shape, there was a dog under a hut. I was going to sit there and write in my journal, but it was just kind of lying there, being swarmed by ants and flies. I thought I saw it earlier, in the hut, and I just hoped it was just having a really deep nap. Concerned, I asked these two island employees nearby if the dog was dead. They said, no, he was just asleep. But they inspected a little more closely, and decided, yes, the dog was dead. Poor thing. They took ropes, tied it by the legs and carried it down past these rustic looking cottages.
Speaking of dead things, now in front of me, just a few yards away, a jelly fish is dying a slow death behind a log. Wesley had found it earlier, and our tour guide, Renlee, tossed it out to die. He also scoured the shallows for more jellyfish with a snorkel mask, dragging behind him an orange lifesaver. It is a good idea, I suppose, to hunt for jellies, but it still made me kind of sad.
On the lighter side of things, lunch at Banana Island was excellent, with yellow fin tuna and grilled pork. The kids were so impressed with our crew’s service. I am sure as Americans, they are a little weirded out by so much service, things like preparing lunch not being their chore, but they seem floored with the tour so far.
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Malcapuya Island, end of the day…
What a magical experience.
Fireflies. Alitaptap. We were all sitting on the dark beach, having just read our scriptures on my iPad mini, when Drew noticed a couple twinkling in the trees behind us. And then, in the water, Sabrina saw some things sparkle – plankton that are bio-luminescent, like little sparks in the water. So cool in itself, but even more fun because the kids were just so happy to experience these.
Me, too. The plankton is like having magic in your fingertips. You “tickle” them, like Wesley said, and they light up. Amazing. The kids kept oohing and ahhing throughout, and they are still looking at it, minutes after I have come back to my chair overlooking “our” island for the night.
We have a whole island to ourselves. You dock on this tree-covered beach, walk up a little trail and rise, then walk down into a whole resort, with covered tables and hammocks, a white beach, toilet and a hut. Normally, the beach would be covered with tents. But tonight it was empty. Our crew said the island had 116 guests earlier today but luckily, by the time we arrived, everyone else had gone.
Sweet.
There was a fun basketball court with sand for the floor, no nets, and our family played a few games.There were hammocks and shelters, and a hut with simple beds and mattresses. The crew put up a 6 man tent for the kids, by a covered table in case it rains. And then, they said, “See you later.” We joked that they would leave us there for the night without dinner, but of course they would do no such thing. Right? We walked along the beach until dusk past black limestone cliffs, a cave, and volcanic rock.
At 6:30, I saw Renlee approaching us after our little island walk, to announce that dinner was ready. As the kids ran back, the island dogs greeted us, all seven of them barking at the girls, which worried me, but they eventually settled down.
This is glamping, I told the kids, but Sierra said no, glamping is more luxurious. At any rate, no one’s ever fixed my meals camping, and to me that is luxury. I am so amazed with this crew’s service. Such good people with generous hearts. Dinner tonight was yellow fin tuna with kangkong leaves, and pork with mushrooms. Yummy. There were also crispy apples and bananas.
I had asked Renlee earlier about how Kawil got started. He said it was a good way to get four people and their talents together, to form this company. The first three years was rough to turn a profit. They had to rent a boat which was expensive and ate into profits. But fortunately, they got crowd funded on Spark, and they are excited to keep going strong. The neat thing is, they are doing it to help their island and their people. When a trip is booked, Elee said, then there’s work for people on the island.
Then these dogs started pawing at us, and begging for food like our dogs do at home, so after we ate the food with relish, we told the crew right away, else we would find the dogs most likely on the table eating the leftovers.
Earlier, Drew was approached by a little baby monkey (about the size of a squirrel) who climbed his foot, and if he took him off, climbed on his other. And the funny thing about that was, Drew warned earlier, “Don’t touch the wild animals!” When he finally got the cute thing off, the monkey went over to Sabrina. The monkey could tell who were the tender-hearted, for sure. He was cute, but a little worrisome that he would cling to her all night. Eventually, the owner, the island caretaker, took him away.
We also got fresh cut coconut, where we sipped the juice and an island employee cut off the top of the husks, so we could scrape the little bit of flesh.
It has been a cloudy day, but tonight the stars are out. It is like Heavenly Father parted a little ampitheater size hole in the sky so that we could have a star gazing show. And then we had fun watching the plankton and fireflies twinkle.
We are so lucky, I said at the table, and the kids all looked expectantly at me, like, “And?” “Proof?” And I just told them how grateful I was for this experience of being on island all by ourselves.
This island reminds me of some passages from a couple of my novels set in the Philippines. I don’t know if I read about all of these before writing about it – the bioluminescent plankton, the cliffs, but I was excited to see that those details are accurate. I can’t wait to pick up those manuscripts once again and see how I can make the settings come alive even more.
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