Sunday 1st March 2015
We ended up
spending about four hours At Huma Island Resort, being treated like
royalty. There were only two other
guests there – another 200 were arriving the next day. All of the accommodation is built on stilts
out over the water, on two sides of this beautiful little island. So when Cyclone Yolanda came howling around
the corner…they got biffed, bashed and smashed from every angle. The resort manager, Bolly Boll, from South
Africa, a large, imposing man (I took a photo of him but it is completely in
the wrong light so he is just a large silhouette, next to a smaller silhouette
of Pete. Maybe I will include it, just
to show that not all of my photos are fabulously successful…)
joined us for
lunch and I was fascinated to hear him and Mike, also a resort owner-manager,
on a smaller scale, discussing how to create a new island, purpose built, for
an even bigger, better, flasher resort complex.
There are over 6,000 islands in the Philippines, most of them
uninhabited, but apparently it would be worth it to dig up a whole lot of
landfill and purpose-build a whole new one…
The funny thing
about our time at the resort was that, if we had idled up in 2XS, anchored
neaby, turned up in our dinghy…we woud NOT have had such royal treatment! We would have been shooed away and soundly
told that this was NOT for the likes of us.
Our seaplane
pilot, John, told us later that yes, many resorts are very unwelcoming to
yachts. MOVE ON! Others put out
welcoming flags and invite yachties on shore for drinks and meals. He says that he himself has been shooed away,
in the seaplane! No boats allowed
here! He tries to say, I’m not a boat, I’m a plane! How many of them do you get, rocking up to
your resort??
 |
| Dante driving us around in our electrical buggy |
So we were very
lucky indeed, to have a few hours to explore Huma Island. We tried to go for a walk, but within a few
hundred metres we were intercepted by a buggy, driven by kindly Dante,
 |
| Dante |
who took us all
around the works. And works they
are! He is the second-in-charge of the
re-building project, and it is an exhausting task. About 80 of the cabins (on stilts) were
completely wrecked. Large heavy jacuzzis
were washed out into the bay. Just about
everything – smashed! And it is much
more difficult, I think, to re-build, renovate, restore, re-create, than to
build from scratch.
They have two
months. (Yes two MONTHS!) to get it all
to $1000-a-night standard…
Dante is very
tired.
He took us to the
spa, full of soothing sounds, mermaids,
Enya in the background. We were invited to look at all of the different
rooms – Moroccan, Ayurvedic, this, that, the other – and then they plied us
with iced towelettes and cups of soothing ginger tea.
Maybe we will
never get to another $1000-per-night resort…but at least now we have an inkling
of what it is like!
 |
| A dark room with sandy floor |
Oh and…Dante said,
Here is a special treat for you! Come
and look at our beach bar!!
Meanwhile…in Hobart, Chris, Fleur and I have been having
interviews with the funeral parlour director.
John, at Turnbulls, spoke very carefully about our father’s preparations,
made in 1998. “I don’t think I have ever
come across anyone quite so well-prepared for their own funeral…” He didn’t have many questions for us because –
it was all bought, and paid for, 17 years ago (Pre-GST!) says Dad, in his copious
notes…
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