4th October - circumnavigation of Busuanga Island - back on mooring in Coron

Saturday 4^th October

(I love the way this boat matches the reef… The bare hills in the background are not due to clear-felling – the ground is barren on some of the hills and nothing grows, other than tussocks)

Eventually, around 11am yesterday, we did manage to leave our mooring in Coron.

We had a beautiful peaceful three hours or so around the corner of the island, and we anchored in a calm bay called Port Borac.

Large families live in these little houses

Co-ordinates:

12 degrees 2.327 N

120 degrees 18.916E

depth 5.3-ish metres

Very sheltered

People here live a very basic life in tiny woven huts, built on stick stilts.  They are surrounded by dogs, pigs, chickens, and their only mode of transport is their boats.

We spent the afternoon watching rain clouds and doing excited little rain dances.  We managed to gather maybe 200 litres of water in our buckets.  It all got very exciting when I knocked the precious black plastic funnel into the water.  I had to leap, fully clad, into the sepia-toned sea to rescue it; Pete was very impressed – or was it amusement that made him laugh so much??

It kept raining quite heavily even while the sun shone brightly

Pete finally met up with Seadive Jim (whose full name is Jim F Goll, from Seattle, USA.)  They had deep conversations in the café while I went to the little shop where I bought my new internet simcard, to get top-up.  

Jim and Pete

My shop friends – brother and sister – were extremely kind and helpful, and very happy to be photographed.  There are not many veiled ladies in Coron, but there is a general air of tolerance and acceptance, one way and another.  This particular woman is VERY lively and animated and expressive; all you can see are her sharp black eyes.

Her brother is more shy, but he made sure to test my computer, and my simcard.  He tried it out on his home-made computer, and showed it to me very proudly.  “The only one of its kind in the world!” he said.  He has made it himself, out of recycled bits and pieces.  I am mightily impressed!

A most excellent computer!

We got up early this morning and by lunch time were in the gorgeous bay where we found El Rio y Mar resort, with a free mooring just for us.  Good thing too.   It is much too deep to be able to anchor here.  30 metres and then suddenly – shallow coral!

The water here is REALLY crystal clear.  Lots of places we are told have crystal clear water.  But they don’t really.  Here we can see everything very clearly, as if looking into a mirror.  Bliss!  (I swam so much, up and down the reef, that I nearly made myself ill...)

Monday 6^th October

We stopped for a swim off Coron Island - SO beautiful!

And now we are back on our big strong mooring in Coron, after a very pleasant and successful circumnavigation of Busuanga Island.  We did not go aground on a reef, nor did we get tangled in pearl farm nets.  It was all very beautiful and…all is well on 2XS!

3rd October - Coron - heading for El Rio y Mar (Busuanga)

Friday 3^rd October

Mermaid water

Today we hope to be leaving Coron for a few days, maybe to go right around Busuanga Island.  We are still waiting for poor (Seadive) Jim to return from Manila, so Pete can discuss details.  But…his plane has been cancelled, twice, which is, says Lisa, from the dive shop, making steam come out of his ears!  With a bit of luck Pete will see him early tomorrow morning.

Lisa and Pete

We ate some more fabulous little lobsters today.  As Pete says, Why would you ever eat anything else?  So delicious, so cheap!  He (yes, our Pete, the recluse,) struck up a conversation with an English girl sitting nearby.

Rachel has only just arrived here.  She is planning to do some diving, and is trying to work out how to get to her next destination – Apo Island – without having to sit on the bamboo deck of an outrigger boat for ten hours, as she did on her way here from El Nido. I thought she might like to come for  a swim out to the little reef with me, so we took her out to 2XS and I lent her some bathers and snorkeling gear.

Captain Pete kindly took us out to the reef in the dinghy – it is very hard to find it, while swimming – and there was no current in operation, so we were able to have a good look at the coral and the fishies before swimming back to 2XS.  I found a beautiful grey and white striped sea snake to show Rachel.  She was very brave but I could feel ripples of fear coming through the water towards me…

In the morning we both peered intently across the water, looking for signs of rain.  And I saw…a tail, flipping out of the water! Like a small whale’s tail, very jaunty.  Pete missed it, but I saw it three times before it vanished.  I tied to described it o him, then I got it – it was a perfect mermaid’s tail!  I must have seen a dugong!  Mystical magical shy creature of the sea!  Of course there is no photo…but this is the water in which it lives, at sunset…)

(We might be out of internet connection for a few days – heading towards El Rio y Mar on the other side of Busuanga.  All things being equal…)

2nd October - Coron (Busuanga) - water collection

Thursday 2^nd October

Yesterday we could see big storm clouds over Coron.

Well we were ready, with our buckets, and our systems!  For a while the storm toyed with us – it rained to the right, then to the left, then somewhere else.  Eventually – yes!  It pelted down upon us and our preparations.

Pete has created a new system, aligned with the new white tarpaulin.  He bought a big bucket and drilled a hole in it, then shoved in a connector to the downpipe so that every drop which is collected in the bucket can go straight into the tank.  Nifty!

And it worked!

In the meantime I kept to the old system, off the old black tarp…

I think I managed to pour at least seven buckets of lovely fresh rainwater into the tank – SO satisfying!

After that we felt we had earned our lunch, so we had fabulous chili lobsters (little ones, like Moreton Bay bugs,) at Seadive.  (This is not at all extravagant…in fact I think it costs us about the same when we cook onboard as it does to eat out, in Coron.

We sat and tolked to Dolores at the Seadive office on he street.  I managed to capture the elusive Saint Monique 2.

The alley children had hijacked a tricycle parked outside – nobody seemed to mind..

We need to talk to Jim (Seadive owner) about our arrangements – he has been in Manila.  But after quite a long time sitting on the office steps, we decided to go for a walk.  Not up and down and around the streets this time, but along the main road.  There were lots of interesting things for us to gawk at.

For instance, I loved this spotty house.

But the road is narrow and there is constant traffic (trikes and motorbikes) and there are pitfalls everywhere so as well as trying not to get crushed by a trike, you have to watch your feet ALL THE TIME.

We stopped at the Kokosnuss Resort, about four kilometres down the road.  It is partly inhabited and partly being reconstructed after a bit of devastation last year – Cyclone Yolanda made a brief but powerful appearance on Busuanga.

I like the way they are re-building the construction around the big palm trees…

On the way back we very fortunately found a side road, leading down to the water.  Much more peaceful…like a walk down a country lane, really!  We found a house with a gleaming Jeep – obviously a prized possession – trapped behind bars.

Once we got back down to the water it was like being in a little village. 

The stilthouses are connected by wooden walkways.

And they do have electricity, although in comes in fits and starts, in Coron.  Everyone just waits patiently for the town generators to kick in again.

I took a photo of some darling schoolgirls on their way home.  When I showed it to them they clustered around the camera, and one of them said, “Oh so beautiful!”  Yes indeed!

We had read in the local newspaper that somebody had contracted typhoid after eating chicken giblets from a street stall.  Well that isn’t going to happen to us… And I took a photo of some giblets hotly grilling away on the side of the street as we came back into town.  No we were not in the least tempted, but a large group of Chinese students was happily munching away – the Chinese do love a giblet…

(For some reason I am not permitted to upload the giblet photo...maybe it is too gruesome??)