I had been assured by many, many people that once I reached Bagamanoc my life of crashing and banging over rough and rocky roads would be over. It would be cement paving all the way from there to Virac, I was told. I should have known better than to trust any of these informants. One road from Bagmananoc to Virac may indeed have been paved. I’ll never know. But my road – the coast road running through Gigmoto and Baras to Virac – was most definitely NOT paved and offered up the same physical and emotional challenge as the roads preceding it.

The first part of my journey past Bagmanonoc was easygoing, though. The road was paved and even though it was extremely steep in parts, I was able to actually ride my bike to the tops of the hills. I was breathing heavily and drowning in sweat, but at least I was still riding and not reduced to pushing. Plus, I got to enjoy the swooping downhills on the other side.

I passed some unusual scenery in the form of a high lake with a type of natural water mangrove around it. The plants growing in this water were farmed – as is everything on the island of Catanduanes. The roads were more heavily populated than in the far north, and I passed my time back in the familiar territory of responding to hundreds of “Hey, Joe”’s.

In the town of Viga, I had a somewhat unusual encounter. I had stopped at a corner store right in front of the combination of municipal hall and “Pulis” station. (I find this spelling of police to be quite amusing, as if written by a 4-year-old child in crayon.) A woman in a bright T-shirt was standing outside of the “Pulis” building and shouting at me urgently and waving me over. I had half a mind to simply wave at her and keep on my way. If I stopped to talk to everyone who waved at me, I’d never get anywhere. But I cycled through the gates of the municipal hall and “pulis” station and rode up to her expecting to go through the usual social interrogation.

This interrogation, however, turned out to be quite a bit different – official rather than social. I was invited to come inside the pulis station and then I was interrogated quite thoroughly about my identity and activities on Catanduanes and the Philippines in general. I don’t know if it was intended this way, but I got the feeling that I was being handled in a methodical way, with some people being official and direct and others being friendly and open – as if trying to trip me up into a damaging statement. It was the good cop, bad cop routine. And while I was being interrogated by a variety of uniformed and plainclothes police officers, a woman hovered around me with a Canon point-and-shoot camera and took my portrait from every possible angle. These were official pictures, I was told, that would be sent to the provincial pulis station for their records. Despite this, I couldn’t help but look into the lens and smile goofily.

The officers apologized over and over for the inconvenience of this interview. They said it was just part of their job. I smiled and said it was absolutely fine. As far as encounters with police I’ve had around the world, this was by far the most pleasant. I did, however, doubt that it was just part of their job. It was far too goofy for that. For one thing, it was just pure chance that I was sitting there in the pulis station being interrogated rather than cycling through the mountains. I had already ridden past the pulis station in Viga once and no one had seen me. Had I not taken a wrong turn, doubled back, and then stopped at that corner store to buy some Tang and Nestea mix for my water bottles, the pulis never would have seen me at all. If I were indeed some kind of big-time criminal wanted for this or that reason, they could then put in the story of my arrest the colorful detail that I was captured because I stopped to buy some Tang – like a serial killer being busted for a traffic ticket.

And my official “arrest” had little of the official about it. No pulis officer came up to me and clapped a hand on my shoulder and dragged me off. No pulis car came racing up with siren sounding and lights flashing, spilling out pulis officers brandishing guns and handcuffs. No, a friendly woman in a bright cotton T-shirt just waved at me from across the street. What would they have done, I wondered, if I had just waved back and cycled off?

The interrogation was also rather haphazard. There wasn’t even an official ledger in which to record my information. The best they could do was to pull out a scrap piece of blank paper and jot things down at random from my passport, which they had asked me to produce. I was interviewed in a rather informal fashion by two separate men wearing colorful T-shirts. Then, after I thought the whole process was over, an actual pulis officer in uniform came in and sat down at the desk across me and began the interrogation all over again. There was little for him to do, however, as the info had already been written down on the scrap of paper. He looked at my passport and wished me a belated happy birthday – my birthday having passed a couple of weeks ago.

The photographs they took were also somewhat different from the standard police mug shots that one sees in movies all the time. I was not asked to stand in front of a blank wall and hold a number. The woman just hovered in the background and shot me seated there from all sides. Then when the police officer in uniform showed up, she backed up so that she could get both of us in the frame and record the actual interrogation in progress. I wanted to ask her if this was for the official record or for her scrapbook.

One officer – one of the friendly “good” cops in a T-shirt – put the final weird stamp on the event by asking me what I thought of the bombing in Boston. Having been out of touch with the world in general, I didn’t know that there had been a bombing in Boston, and I had to ask him for the details. I felt curiously suspect as I did so – as if only the guilty would pretend not to even have heard of the bombing. The police officer seemed to think this way as well and was puzzled how I could know nothing about it. I wanted to tell him that if they managed to stretch the Internet out to the barangay hall in San Vicente and provide them with computers and get the power failures under control, I might have known about it. Otherwise, while cycling through the mountains of Catanduanes, I really couldn’t be expected to keep up with world events. It felt distinctly odd to be in this small police station being photographed and questioned about a bombing in Boston. I smiled throughout it all, however, and just enjoyed being out of the hot sun for a while.

When the questions dried up and there were no more evil things to suspect me of, my passport was returned to me and I was allowed to be on my way. I got on my bike and cycled off, wondering what in the world that was all about. A funny sidenote is that this wasn’t my only encounter with the “pulis” that day. While leaving Bagamanoc in the morning, I had had to pass by a police checkpoint. There was a barricade set up on the road and five or six young officers lounging in the shade – all in comfortable bright yellow cotton T-shirts with “Pulis” written on them. One would be forgiven for thinking they were members of a rock band except for the rather large and menacing weapons they were all carrying. These officers didn’t seem to expect me to stop at all, but I did anyway and just passed the time of day with them before pedaling on. And then in Viga, while searching for the turn-off to the coast road, I came across a military checkpoint. It consisted of a speed bump and a barrier with barbed wire plus one heavily armed and camofluage-wearing soldier sitting in the shade. The soldier was not interested in me at all, and I spent a few minutes there getting information from some people about the coast road – all of which turned out to be wrong.

For a few kilometers past Viga, the road was paved. This was a good thing because the road was very steep and it took a lot of effort to make it over the mountains. The road turned back north at this point and traveled for quite some distance around the very end of a peninsula before slowly turning back east and south. I passed the usual stunning scenery along the way, stopping often with my camera in my hands and the word “wow” on my lips. Then, past a very pretty coastal barangay, the cement disappeared to be replaced by the usual rock, and the road began to climb. That began a six-hour trudge before I finally and gratefully arrived at Gigmoto – my home for the next night.

In the back of my mind, I was planning to spend the night at the beach resorts of Puranan. It would have been a relief to get that out of the way because every single person on Catanduanes assumed I had been there, asked if I had been there, and then seemed very disappointed that I hadn’t been there. Even when we went over my itinerary in detail and I gave them a running account of my exact trip starting from Virac and heading to San Andres and then to Pandan as I went around Catanduanes in a clockwise direction, they would somehow be unable to connect the dots and realize that I couldn’t have been to Puraran yet, that, in fact, in cycling south down the coast road toward Gigmoto, I was heading TOWARD Pururan. Once I finally make it there and spend the night there, I can tell people that yes indeed I have been to Puraran and I will cease to be such a puzzling and disappointing tourist.

Once I saw the nature of the coast road – rough and rocky and steep – and saw how far it was to Gigmoto, I realized that I had little chance of making it to Pururan. I would be lucky to make it to Gigmoto before nightfall at the pace I was setting.

For the largest part of this journey, the coast felt somewhat different from the west coast – more sparsely inhabited perhaps and less accessible from the road. The mountains felt taller and the dropoff to the ocean below seemed greater. The mountains themselves ran into the ocean – sticking long fingers of high rolling rock out to sea. The road following the coast then had to go up and over all these fingers – like cycling over the knuckles of a giant. However difficult and slow it was to push my bicycle up these endless mountains, the views from the top of each knuckle were well worth it. The scenery was spectacular and sometimes made me regret that I was up there on the high road rather than down there in a boat on the gorgeous turquoise water itself. Yet, in a boat on the surface of the water, I don’t think you would get quite the same perspective on the beauty of the area. Indeed, the road would generally come right back down to sea level in between the knuckles and I would pass through a small village right on the water. I cycled to the water’s edge and I could look up at the high mountains around – mountains that I had just struggled up and over – and the scenery, pleasant as it was in its tropical beach paradise way – wasn’t quite as majestic as when I was standing up on top and looking down and over it all.

I passed so many beautiful coves and harbors and through so many beautiful rice-farming valleys that I lost track of them all. There seemed to be no end to them. I had one eye on the clock and I began to sense that I really would be lucky to make it even to Gigmoto before sunset. I didn’t have to get to Gigmoto that day, of course, but I had been told there was lodging there, and after such a difficult day I felt some type of lodging – with easy access to food and water – would be nice.

I was tempted to call an end to my day when I reached the pleasant barangay of Sorion. Just before I arrived in this barangay, I encountered a man with a tricycle gathering up a big load of coconuts. He had a small army of children – three of which were his – in the surrounding fields climbing up the trees and cutting down the ripest coconuts. These came tumbling down the mountainside like soccer balls gone mad – more like cannon balls. They threatened to go right over the road and down the cliff on the other side, and a young boy acted as goalkeeper and stuck out a leg or his whole body to block them. One coconut took a weird bounce and headed straight for me. Luckily, it lost steam and rolled to a lazy stop right at my feet. I just put up my sandal and stopped it and then put it in the tricycle. The man said he was going to sell the coconuts to various stores in Sioron – the next barangay. He would get two and half pesos (about six cents) for each one.

It was a pleasant encounter and seemed a good omen for stopping in Sorion. And Sorion didn’t disappoint when I cycled through it. It was a pleasant and inviting place. However, there was no actual lodging to be had and the lure of a private place to stay drew me on to attempt the final two or three mountains before Gigmoto.

I almost lived to regret that decision. I was only three kilometers away from Gigmoto by that point, but the mountains were so tight and crinkled that even those three kilometers could mean seven or eight mountain climbs. I had been essentially pushing my loaded bicycle up these steep mountain roads for six hours straight and my legs and arms were like rubber. I had little strength left, and I wondered if I would make it to Gigmoto at all. I realized that I had had only a small breakfast in Bagamanoc and had had nothing to eat all day – not the greatest planning for a cycling journey, when food is pure fuel for the pumping legs.

Tags: barangay, Catanduanes Bike Trip, Gigmoto, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Virac