I was effectively offline for four days. Not even Facebook got a glance. It was an hour flight over Southern Luzon, some other islands that look explorable, and into a nonstop rain storm. We took the ride from the guy who is 90 lbs, literally soaking wet, and holding up a sign with our names on it. It took hours, through roads like I haven't seen since eastern Bali. The provinces, as they're called around here, are deep in the culture and life of the Filipino. People live in bamboo huts of evenly cut dried slats tied together with thick fishing line in a variety of patterns and used with the same variety as walls, windows, floors, and roofs. A town is more than four of these buildings in a cluster along a road. Inevitably one of these houses has three or more people grouped around a television and has the signature single-servings hanging in the openings - a sari-sari store.
It was well past dark when we arrived to hike down almost two hundred stairs to the beach below. We walked into a very welcoming scene of a grand central room with a soaring bamboo pole supported roof. Heavy canvas blocked out the sheets of sideways rain coming in from a restless ocean. The electricity went out only twice. I had four hours of sleep on my side out of the last 24 when we arrived and I did a fine job of catching up after that first night.
Even though diving wasn't in season, Aaron and I found ways to spend our time. Mostly sleeping, eating, playing UNO, downing San Miguel like it's Filipino water (it really is). The weather never really let up for more than thirty minutes one day - a thirty minutes we spent pretending it wasn't scattered drops in storm-surrounded sunlight and braved the elements to lay out. Families came and lingered over novels and iPhones. I read two books in the space of four days - the first two books I've read beyond The Life of Pi in the last year. Neither was good, nor a waste of time.
The weather was so bad, our flight back was cancelled and we found ourselves bedding down in the small college town of Dumagete last night. We found Rizel Cakes, a bakery unrivaled in quality yet in the Philippines, and continued our pattern of eat, sleep, repeat. The return to Manila was familiar, busy, and involved me getting the motorbike repaired (again), setting up repair for the washing machine tomorrow, making yet another questionable meal of local ingredients, and opening up the final LBC box we mailed to ourselves almost two months ago.
Life is not getting remarkably easier, but the perks are starting to emerge beyond eating the best mangoes on the planet for breakfast every day. I also need to give a nod to Jaime and Nikki - our hosts at the Kookoo Nest - and twelve year veterans of owning a hotel/dive shop in the Philippines. Their consistently calm demeanor, willingness to hang out, and general amiability really recommend them to their retirement job-of-choice. Not a bad life at all.