Wednesday April 10, 2013

6:00 a.m. Boat from Tobaco, Luzon to Virac, Catanduanes, Philippines

I almost didn’t make it out of Legazpi yesterday. I woke up feeling that I just wanted to hang out for another day. That feeling was reinforced by everything – the relative comfort of my private room (despite the presence of a family of very large cockroaches in the bathroom), the cloudy skies, and the wonderful breakfast I had. I just wanted to relax and write and get on the Internet and take pictures, maybe go for another bike ride through the villages on the volcano.

I went for breakfast at Jamaco again. They have the best food and the most comfortable seating I’ve come across. It’s a clean and friendly place and caters to the employees of the hospital across the street. I met one of the guys that I’d spoken to about getting water. I didn’t recognize him at first, but he, of course, recognized me. I wrote in my journal for a while over a couple of cups of coffee. It was perhaps 9:30 when I finished breakfast and writing in my journal. I generally like to leave very early in the morning if I’m going to leave at all, so it felt like it was too late. I as teetering on the knife edge of a decision, and I think I decided to leave based on the sound of the jeepneys. The constant roar and flow of those armored turtles was starting to get to me. So I took my courage in both hands – and it really took courage – and started packing up my bicycle and getting ready to go.

I hate to go on and on about luggage again, but it is a dominant part of my days at the moment. I’m slowly forcing some order onto my luggage and packing it more efficiently and more tightly. But that still leaves me with a lot of weight and a lot of bags. I’ve found it very depressing. I remember that it takes time to adjust to the constant loading and unloading of the bike. There are advantages to having the bike, but sometimes they aren’t so apparent when you are busy carrying load after load of bags up and down the stairs and trying to strap them to an uncooperative bike.

The woman at the front desk was a great help to me – at least in terms of my morale. She smiled at me and was very friendly and that made all the difference. I packed up my bike in the lobby of the hotel and then I carefully rolled it down the steep loading ramp down to the street. Getting out of Legazpi wasn’t easy. It wasn’t very interesting either. I had to go back downtown along the same route that I’d followed many times. The road to Tobaco leaves from the other side of the downtown area. There are also a number of one-way streets there and I got a bit mixed up. I had to scratch and sniff my way along and just trust that I was going in the right direction. Faith was quite necessary because there were no road signs at all. You don’t value things like road signs until they are suddenly missing altogether. I tell myself that I am completely free and it doesn’t matter what happens. Even if I lose my way and don’t make it to Tobaco, it doesn’t matter. I’ll just stay wherever I end up. But no matter how many times you tell yourself something like that, it doesn’t really work unless it is true. And humans tend to focus on goals. We can’t help it. My goal was to get to Tobaco and I’d be annoyed and upset if I didn’t make it there.

My bike felt heavy and overloaded and I had a hard time cycling along. This is something else that I took very lightly. People asked me whether I was training for this bike trip and I just laughed that off and talked about how there is no point training for a long trip. You just ride a short distance the first few days and do your training as you go. But I quickly realized that laughing that off doesn’t mean anything if it isn’t true. Laugh all you want, but your legs don’t respond to laughter. My left leg in particular was giving me a lot of trouble. It felt weird. Back in Taiwan, I kept feeling a sharp pain somewhere in the upper thigh deep in my leg. I had no idea what it was and just ignored it. On this first bike ride, I started to feel that pain in my thigh over and over again and my left leg just feel kind of weak and uncooperative. My right leg felt fine. It was just that left. That made me nervous.

Time was also working against me to an extent. On previous bike trips, I comfortably spent many hours in the saddle just riding along. And I went into this trip with that in mind. However, I’d forgotten that it takes time for that mood to develop. I didn’t feel quite so relaxed and “in the zone” until quite a few days and even weeks into my other trips. So when I set off from Legazpi, I didn’t take it seriously enough. I figured it would be fine and I could comfortably spend hours in the saddle. That, of course, was not true, and after just an hour, I was already feeling tired and hot and ready to stop. The riding felt somewhat monotonous. I wanted to do photography, to write, to read, to do anything. And just sitting in the saddle and spinning the pedals felt rather boring. I wasn’t sure what to do with that feeling, and I tried to just set it aside for the time being.

It goes without saying that it was hot, and since this was a main road, there was quite a bit of heavy truck traffic and jeepney traffic. It wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it wasn’t awful either. Considering it was my first real day on the road with a fully loaded touring bike, it was about as good as can be expected. A number of times, I trotted out a cliché to make myself feel better. My favorite one was this: “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

A lot of my thinking about this trip (I wouldn’t call it planning), came from reading cycling blogs online – Peter Gostelow’s for example. I took inspiration from these blogs with more clichés. Like this one: “If he or she can do it, then I can do it.” Once I started cycling along out of Legazpi, I started to wonder about that. Just because Peter Gostelow did it does NOT mean that I can do it. In fact, my admiration for all these long distance cyclists went up a great deal. This cycling shit was hard, and I hadn’t even gone cycling yet. And these people folded camping and cooking and heavy-duty blogging into their cycling days. How in all that is possible did they manage to do that? I’m about ready to dump all my camping gear. It’s a great idea – camp anywhere, save money, cook our own food. But how do you do that when it is all you can do just to survive? I guess like everything else, you ease into it. It is too much to expect that on day 1 of a bike tour, you do everything perfectly. There are too many details to worry about. You can’t expect it to come naturally. And when you go into it completely stupidly, as I did, then you can expect some mental and physical hardship.

I quickly got into the habit of pulling into little patches of shade for a rest and drink of water. When I went to Ethiopia and Guinea, I would start each day with a lot of water. I’d have 3 bicycle bottles on the bike, two Nalgene bottles in a pannier bag, and even more water in my dromedary bag. That makes my load very heavy, so on this trip I took only one Nalgene bottle. I’m already starting to regret that as I went through the water I had with me pretty quickly. It actually got me through the day, but it was a fairly short day of cycling.

The best part of the day by far was a (rather long) detour I took through the beach town of Santo Domingo. The main road didn’t go through Santo Domingo. A secondary road looped through it. A road sign pointed to Santo Domingo and I had the impression that it was relatively close. I thought I’d just duck in and take a look and then go back to the main road. It turned out to be quite a bit further, but I kept going and found myself in a very pleasant town. It was the kind of place where I could easily hang out for a few days or even a week. I spotted the occasional “resort”, but I didn’t check on prices. There were beaches of a sort, but they were black sand beaches. The lanes were narrow with little traffic with pleasant huts and houses on both sides. It was a friendly and easygoing place. I almost made the snap decision to stay, but I had spent so much time in Legazpi that I wanted to have the feeling of being on the road.

I soon nearly regretted my decision to leave. The road leaving from Santo Domingo was extremely steep and long – so steep and long that I physically almost didn’t make it. Psychologically I was at a disadvantage because I can’t shake the feeling that I’m carrying too much on my bicycle. This feeling saps my energy and my determination. I feel a bit silly muscling this heavy load up the hill. If I ever do this again, I think it will be time to try to go superlight.

The Filipinos have not been helping my morale either. Long ago, I did a bike trip on Palawan and people there laughed so hard when they saw me on my bicycle that they fell over. They found me so ridiculous and silly that they lost the strength to stand as they laughed. No one on the ride from Legazpi to Tobaco actually fell over, but there was laughter. I’ve written before about what I’ve heard called the “spotlight effect”, and part of this effect is that one tends to interpret what other people do in terms of your own self-image. So since I was feeling rather silly and ridiculous, I interpreted that laughter as ridiculing me and making fun of me. I felt it was malicious laughter. It probably wasn’t. Half the time, people laughing are laughing at each other. Someone will make a joke about someone else – in reference to me – and that will cause the laughter. They aren’t laughing at me directly.

I made it out of Santo Domingo, but it was a very difficult thing. I had to stop a number of times to catch my breath and let my legs recover. I also stopped at every pump I saw and ducked my head under the cold water. I have to say that my clothing wasn’t helping my sense of identity. The idea behind this clothing is that it dries very quickly and is very lightweight. That may be true, but it also means that it gets wet very quickly. So I looked a mess. The underwear is made of the same high-tech material, and it quickly became soaked with sweat and then it soaked through the front of my shorts so that I looked like I had peed my pants. I became self-conscious about that, and I didn’t want to get off my bike. When I did so and I heard people laughing, I imagined that they were laughing at the giant wet mark on the front of my shorts. I felt very self-conscious in a silly way all day long. I never like being the center of attention, and when you are a giant foreigner on a bicycle, you tend to get a lot of attention.

To be fair, I should mention the other side of this coin. Being a foreigner, I also get a lot of positive attention and support. Men on motorcycles would ride beside me and give me a big thumbs-up and say that my bicycle was wonderful and it was good for the environment and all that. People want to talk to me all the time. I hate to add something else negative, but it’s true that I already find the conversations kind of boring. The Filipinos are very easy to talk with, but coming as we do from such different cultures and lifestyles, we have very little in common and there is almost nothing to talk about other than practical stuff. They ask me where I’m from and where I’m going and what I think of the Philippines. If I can, I ask them about their job and life. And that’s about it. My best night so far was the night I spent having dinner and talking with Jess. We talked for hours about all kinds of things, including the movie “Zero Dark Thirty” and the Academy Awards. We live in the same world and have lots to discuss. With Filipinos, I have little in common and I get tired of the basic question conversation.

Another thing that has struck me in these early days is that my plans for this trip were overly and unnecessarily ambitious. For the Philippines, for example, I plotted routes that took me almost everywhere – even to northern Luzon and then to all the islands of the Visayas and even to Busuanga and Coron. Now that I’m physically here, I can see that such a thing isn’t necessary. There is variation in the country, of course, but much of it is also very similar. Riding down the main road between Legazpi and Tobaco is likely very similar to riding down any other road in the country. No need to ride down every mile of road to experience it all when it is all likely much the same. The same goes for towns. There is a lot that is identical between them and you don’t have to visit all of them to get a feel for the country. I think one can pick and choose a few places to visit and then call it good. I also don’t need to spend four months here. Two months would be fine. And it is also becoming more expensive than I expected. It is one thing to make a budget based on daily food and accommodation expenses, but a lot of other expenses pop up.

The full ride from Legazpi to Tobaco with my long detour came to just 40 kilometers. Just 40 kilometers, but it did me in. And then downtown Tobaco was a challenge – just as busy and crazy as Legazpi with jeepneys and tricycles. Off the main drag, though, Tobaco was much more pleasant than Legazpi. There were a lot more bicycle tricycles around than motorized ones. Streets were less busy and less commercial. It felt more relaxed.

I got directions to the port and on the way there, I passed a nice-looking hotel called the Maevin Inn (or something like that). I pulled in to check it out. A friendly man ran up to me and showed me a room with fan for 450 pesos. The room was very large and furnished simply with a big bed, a table and chairs, and a fan. It had its own bathroom with a cold water shower. I balked at the price at first. It’s actually quite reasonable at $9 US, but I was hoping to spend less than that on this trip. The inn itself was quite interesting. It was in an old house. The room I took was room 7 on the main floor, but the check in desk was up some wide wooden stairs with heavy wooden banisters. It was clearly a very old house. The rooms up there would be quite nice to stay in.

The port was not as busy as I expected. It was almost completely empty, and I was allowed to simply cycle through the main gates and go to the ticket office. I chatted with the armed men near the front gate, but they had no problem with me just riding into the port area. I went up to a window and a young man spoke to me about the ferries. He moved a piece of cardboard that was covering a square opening in the window and I felt a blast of cold air conditioned air come out. I kept the conversation going longer than necessary just to keep feeling that cold air. After this long conversation, I found out that he knew nothing about tickets for the ferry. He worked for the port authority, and I’d have to ask the ferry people about the tickets for that. I went inside the building – nervous about leaving my bike outside – and discovered that the whole place was empty. I walked right past the X-ray machine and into the departure area. I went up to the ticket windows and read the information there. But there was no one there and I couldn’t buy a ticket.

For dinner, I stopped at a typical neighborhood eatery. I found that after my 40-km bike ride, I was ravenous. I had two complete meals including three pieces of amazing chicken. It came to 114 pesos. I was that hungry partially because I hadn’t eaten lunch. They had filtered water in a big container and it was nice and cold and I had glass after glass. The owner of the restaurant chatted with me for a while and asked all the questions about where I was from and where I was going. He suggested some tourist attractions for me to check out – wake boarding and that sort of thing. I told him that I was more interested in simple things – like his little restaurant.

Once I was settled in my room, I went to a water refilling station. They filled up my water bag with 7 liters of water and charged me 15 pesos. They did just as good a job as the other place and they thoroughly cleaned my bag before they filled it. It’s a great way to get water. I strapped the bag to my pannier bag and rode it back to the hotel and dropped it off before I went to get dinner.

I had a chat with the woman at the refilling station, and she said that the water in Tobaco was potable but that in Legazpi it was not. So I could have filtered the Tobaco water. Still, for 15 pesos, you can’t go wrong. By the way, there is a lot of anti-smoking government advertising in the Philippines, and I saw a funny billboard that said that Tobaco was a tobacco-free zone.

By the time I had dinner and got my water, I was exhausted. Really, really exhausted. And knowing that I had to get up very early to catch the 6:30 ferry, I simply went to bed. I listened to a podcast for a while – Marc Maron interviewing Dick van Dyke – and then shut down for the night. I had some really great dreams and some really horrible ones. The great dreams involved hanging out with people in Taiwan – one particular very beautiful person. And the bad dreams were my usual anxiety dreams – dreams in which I’m trying to pack up and can’t find everything I need. I get more and more frantic and go faster and faster and faster, but no matter how hard I work and how fast I move, I can never finish packing and never find everything I need.

I had no idea what taking this ferry would entail, so I set my alarm for 4:45. As it turned out, I was wide awake at 4:00 a.m. anyway; I got out of bed and started packing. Even after cycling for one day, I had lots of ideas of how to better organize my gear, and I repacked a bunch of stuff in a more efficient manner. This produced a lot of empty space in my bags, but, unfortunately, did not make them any lighter. The bike was obscenely heavy when I finished loading it up, mainly because I had nearly all of the 7 liters of water that I’d gotten the night before. I didn’t want to throw it away and I won’t be doing much cycling, so I decided to bring it all with me.

And this brings me to the ferry experience – and all the mistakes I made because of things I didn’t know. A big problem was that all my bags had to go through X-ray security. The people there actually encouraged me to lift up my entire loaded bike and put it onto the conveyor belt. I knew that was impossible and shook off the idea. With no choice in the matter, I set about removing all the bags and putting them on the conveyor belt one by one.

The entire time I’ve been in the Philippines, I’ve been aware that I have to concern myself with security. However, it is pretty much impossible to be secure. At the hotels, there have been signs on the door saying that you should not leave valuables in the rooms. But I have no choice. I can’t bring everything of value with me at all times. I can barely bring the essential things with me. And here I am at this X-ray machine putting my bags onto the belt one by one and my bags go through and out to the other side and out of sight. There is nothing I can do about it. I can’t possibly monitor all my bags all the time by myself. How do other cyclists do it? I have no idea.

I was drenched in sweat by the time I unhooked all the bags. Then I had to go through security myself and got even more drenched in sweat as I put all the bags back on. Now I had to go stand in line to buy a ticket, but there is no way to bring my bike with me as I do that. I have no choice but to leave my bike there unguarded while I buy my ticket.

There were two boats heading to Catanduanes. One was heading to Virac and the other was heading to San Andres. Virac is the main town, so I decided to go there. I assume I will be spending the night in that town. My ticket cost 240 pesos ($6). I also had to pay a terminal fee of 11.2 pesos.

Then came the moment of truth – rolling my bike out to the ferry. I had to wrestle the thing down a series of steps. A man at the door took my terminal fee receipt and tore one side of it. A second man on the outside of the door then tore another side of my terminal fee receipt. My boat ticket had three portions. One was torn off as I walked up the ramp onto the boat. The second was taken as I went through the “entrance” door to the boat from the loading ramp. I guess I get to keep the third portion.

The big issue was, of course, the bike. I was feeling a bit tense and a bit frazzled from the effort of getting this far and from not having had any breakfast. Therefore, when some woman came up to me and told me that I had to pay for the bicycle, I was a bit short with her. I don’t think I was unreasonable. She told me that I had to pay for the bicycle. I asked her how and where. She just kept repeating that I had to pay. I finally lost my temper and told her rather harshly that I understood that I had to pay. She had told me that I had to pay six times. I get it. But she still hadn’t told me anything about the actual paying – Who do I pay? Where do I pay? How much do I pay? I need this information. Luckily for me, even when I lose my temper, I’m quite mild-mannered. In my terms, I was screaming at this woman. But in reality, she didn’t even notice that I was upset. And she finally got herself together enough to point to a door where I had to pay. The problem, again, was that her world is so common and familiar to her and to Filipinos. To tell me that I need to pay is enough. She assumed I knew where to pay. Doesn’t everyone? But of course a dumb white guy from Canada doesn’t know. I think I was upset because I was picturing having to go all the way back into the ferry terminal building and pay there. If so, why didn’t anyone in the building tell me about this “bicycle fee”?

The thing is that ships are rather official vehicles. They have their own staff and rules. And even though I had purchased a ticket for myself in the building, there was still the question of loading the bicycle and that was done through a purser. This purser was sitting in that office and collecting money from everyone with an unusual load. This ferry is large enough that it can carry a dozen buses and large trucks. Those, for example, have to pay extra for the weight. It makes sense. Charging me for my poor bicycle seems insulting, but there was little I could do about it except seethe inwardly. The problem as I saw it was the typical third-world quality to the arrangements – that I was allowed to go through a very long and difficult process of getting my bicycle through the port building, going through security, buying a ticket, paying the terminal fee, and at no point is the question of a fee for the bicycle raised. It’s just not mentioned. And then suddenly I’m charged a fee by some random woman – a woman who can do little but parrot the fact that I must pay but then is incapable of telling me how to do that, where to do that, and how much to pay. I know it is useless and pointless, but I occasionally get it into my head to dig in my heels a little bit and push back. Maybe if that happens often enough, the system will change and become more logical. Of course, it never will.

I was even more forceful with the purser herself. She said that the fee for a bicycle was 190 pesos. I asked her if the fee was the same for a motorcycle. She said no, that a motorcycle fee was 400 pesos. She got out a big book of laminated pages and showed me the columns of items and their associated fees. My bicycle was right there and listed as 190 pesos. She filled out my receipt for me and I had to sign it twice. I told this woman that no one in the terminal building had mentioned a fee for the bicycle when I bought my ticket. This woman pretty much ignored everything I said and just went through the process. I insisted on getting a response though. I kept repeating my points over and over again trying to at least get her to hear me. She finally focused to the extent that I think she understood my point. She still didn’t care. I even went a bit nutty Canadian on her and told her that perhaps she could change the system so that people are informed when they buy their ticket that there are extra fees for luggage. Then this whole problem could be avoided. Her eyes were glazing over again and I’d lost her. That I got so upset over this little detail doesn’t bode well for this trip. Normally, it would take weeks or months before I lose my temper over stupid things like this. When you travel in this part of the world, you expect crazy things. It is part of the experience. And, to be fair, this ferry experience was surprisingly organized. I was expecting total chaos and insanity, and it was actually quite easy and simple.

I think I also lost my temper because before this, I had had to deal with putting my bicycle somewhere. There was no particular system for dealing with this as far as I could tell and all I could get out of people was a vague shouting and pointing. Everyone pointed in different directions and shouted different things. I ended up having no idea what to do. You have to understand that I was standing there with my bicycle in the middle of this massive loading area of the ferry. It’s a huge area and I knew that all those buses and trucks outside were soon going to be jammed in here. Just standing there with my bicycle felt rather strange.

I kept asking people what I was expected to do with the bicycle. Since they had charged me 190 pesos for carrying it on the ship, the least they could do is point out where I should put it. I kind of wandered around the loading area and stopped here and there with my bicycle. Then I’d look around and catch someone’s eye. They would react with a kind of horror and shout “No, no, no!” and wave their arms around and point somewhere else. I did this over and over again until I found myself right at the back of ship. Then some action took place, and some men pulled back a huge plastic curtain to reveal a space tucked away in the side. It was a cargo area and my bike was to go back there. This involved moving some stuff around to make room.

This is another thing that I have to learn – to stand up for myself and take control. I have too much of a trusting nature and I assume that these professional loading guys know what they’re doing and that things will be done properly. THAT is a very dangerous assumption.

My bike was jammed in there and then they all thought everything was done and they started to yell at me to get out of there and go pay my fee. But of course I wanted to at least lock up my bike. When I got out my lock, one young guy pointed to a big bungee cord I had on my bike and indicated that I should use it to lash the bike into place.

This bit of information really took me aback. Of course the bike should be lashed in place! We were going out to sea in big waves and the ship is going to be tossing and heaving. The bike could come crashing to the ground. The guys who had put it in place certainly had done nothing to secure it or place it properly. Why should they? They don’t care.

With this idea going off in my head like a bombshell – and wondering how I could be so stupid as not to think of it myself – I started to assess the situation critically myself. I realized my bike was in a bad place. I moved it until it was tucked in better. I moved the bike close against a heavy bit of metal railing and then I took my bike lock and put it through a convenient hole in the railing and wrapped it around the top tube of my bike’s frame. Sitting here up on deck, I realize that I should have done much, much more. After all, I could now see that ropes as thick as my arm were being wrapped around the trucks and buses and then tied off to a big engine that pulled them tight with a pulley. If even a transport truck needed to be tied down so heavily, how much more so my bicycle? However, I was quite frazzled by this point and the men were yelling at me to get out of there. They needed to close up the area and start loading the trucks. With all that yelling and confusion, I just left the bike as it was. I knew I had rope somewhere in my bags. I just couldn’t think where exactly. I could have used the bungee cord to strap it in place, but that would have meant unstrapping my tent and sleeping pad. Another, perhaps even more important concern, was how to stop these guys from simply unzipping all my pannier bags once I left and just help themselves to whatever they wanted? Of course, I took my main pannier bag with me – the one that contains this NEO, my passport, money, maps, and other important things. But there was still a ton of valuable things in the other bags. And when I got up to the boat deck, I realized with a terrible shock that I had actually left my camera in one of the other pannier bags. I had done a sudden rearrangement of my gear, and my camera had been placed in a front pannier bag where it would be easier to get to while cycling. But I forgot I had done that, so my brand new expensive Olympus is sitting down there just one zipper away from disappearing.

Live and learn. Now that I’ve taken one ferry, I realize some of the things I should do. For one thing, I should put all my rain covers on the pannier bags. That won’t stop a determined thief, but at least all the pockets and compartments and zippers will be covered and that might deter a casual thief or the simply opportunistic ones. I can’t put a padlock on every zipper, but I should do a careful assessment of what is most important and put all those things together in one place and lock up at least that one main compartment. I should also arrive early for every ferry – and at least I had gotten that right this time. I should expect to pay a fee upon boarding. And I should have ropes and bungee cords ready to lash the bike into place. And I should take my time and do it properly no matter how many people are yelling at me to hurry up. I have to learn to stand up for myself and not trust other people. People here don’t know how to handle a touring bike. How could they? You have to watch out for yourself in this part of the world. I have to learn to do that. Like everything to do with this trip, I took riding on this ferry too lightly. I figure since I’ve done this sort of thing before, it would be no biggie. But it is always a biggie, and I should have taken it seriously.

Once my bike was somewhat stowed, I climbed up the steps to the ordinary passage area. There are also air con rooms, but I opted for an ordinary passage ticket. To my delight and surprise, the ship is nearly empty. The last ferry I took in the Philippines – the one from Camiguin – was so packed that you could barely breathe on it. I remember a ferry I took many years ago that was loaded with so much chaos that people and motorcycles were being pushed off gangplanks and falling into the water. An entire fence had come crashing to the ground at the dock as people attempted to climb the fence to get on board the ship. This ferry, despite my problems with the bicycle, was a breeze. It is nowhere near capacity and there is tons of space on all the benches everywhere. There is a little shop onboard, and I could get a cup of 3-in-1 coffee there for 15 pesos. I wandered around the ferry a little bit and took some pictures with my Canon Elph. That was when I realized with shock that my Olympus was in a bag on my bike. Hopefully, it will still be there when we dock.

The lessons I’ve learned? I’ve learned how to prepare my bike for a ferry trip. I’ve learned I’ll have to double ferry fees – a ticket for me and a ticket for my bike. Overall, I’ve learned that it isn’t easy. Like all travel in the Philippines, it isn’t easy and it is going to cost money. So you can’t do it casually. If you are going to travel somewhere, you should have a compelling reason to do so. If you don’t, then stay put. This trip to Catanduanes is kind of a shakeout trip for my bike and gear, and it is definitely working out well – I’m on a steep learning curve. But I hope that Catanduanes is a beautiful and interesting place to make up for all the trouble of getting there. In any event, I hope to stay there for a few days to make it worthwhile.

Other notes. I learned that bananas go for about 46 pesos per kilogram. I bought half a kilogram yesterday for 22 pesos. They were delicious. The bananas that are ripe and ready to eat are generally laid out on the bench or counter. The bananas hanging up might not be quite ready yet.

 

12:36 p.m.

I’ve arrived on Catanduanes and I have already found a place to stay and have just had lunch.

The ferry trip took about four hours, but it didn’t feel like it at all. The hours just flew past. I spent my time writing in this journal and then wandering around the ship checking things out. I met a young priest from India. He was in full robes and with his dark skin, made a very striking figure against the water and the ship. He was working as a missionary and helping children at a center in the city of Naga – the largest city in the Bicol region. He was going to Catanduanes just for the day and night in order to meet some people. He didn’t explain why.

For the remainder of the trip, I made my way to the front of the ferry and leaned over the railing to watch the bow of the ship crashing through the waves. The ferry had a somewhat flat and square front, and it hit the water hard and sent up huge sprays of surf. As I always do, I marveled at the power the engine had to produce to move a ship like this so quickly through the water. When the ship got near to Catanduanes, things got very interesting. We went close to shore, and we were presented with beautiful views of the rocky and sandy coastline with the mountains climbing above. I saw beach after beach, sandy cove after sandy cove, and each one had a resort of some kind with bungalows spread around. It was a feast for the eyes and I took picture after picture with my little Elph. I wondered if I would be able to cycle to those resorts and even if I did so, would I be able to afford to stay at them? I imagined they were quite expensive. Of course, I can afford it, but not within the imaginary budget I’ve set for myself.

The town of Virac was very pleasing to the eye as we got close to shore – a small and accessible place with a friendly face. I felt, after that long trip across the ocean, that we were in the middle of nowhere. It is astonishing all the places in the world that people live. I wanted to watch the docking and unloading process, but the ship’s crew told me to leave the front and return to the passenger area. That was disappointing, but it was great that they allowed me up there at all.

The trucks and buses were unloaded first. I could feel the ship falling and then rising as these heavy vehicles came off. Then there was a rush of people leaving the ferry. I was surprised that there wasn’t a rush of porters and tricycle drivers descending on the boat as they did when I went to Camiguin. I looked around, and I saw that they were all being held back at the main gate behind the fence. That was a nice touch. I also noticed a sign inside the ferry. It was clearly a warning sign, telling people that something was not allowed. A big red X was going through a pile of coins. This sign really puzzled me, and I asked a ship’s employee what it meant. He explained that it referred to the practice of throwing coins into the water for children to dive down and retrieve. I’ve seen this at many different ports, and it is always entertaining for everyone involved. However, I guess it is a bit dangerous and now the practice is being banned in the Philippines – or at least on this ferry. My guess, upon thinking about it, is that the rule is being enforced not to protect the children doing the diving but to avoid delaying the docking of the ferry. I imagine with all the small boats around the ferry and the children diving into the water, it could interfere with the docking process.

The moment of truth finally came, and I went down to the central loading area of the ferry to retrieve my bike. The plastic curtain had been opened, and I could see my bike from a distance. So at least it was still there. When I got closer, I saw with relief that it was still standing upright. Everything also looked to be in good shape and untouched. I quickly unzipped the occasional pocket to see if the camera and other valuable items were still there, and they all were. I unlocked the bike and with much effort rolled it up the ramp from the ferry onto the dock. Even after rolling it those couple of hundred meters, I almost wished someone had stolen a bunch of stuff. At least the bike would be lighter. I don’t know what is making the difference, but the bike just seems much heavier than on any other trip I’ve been on. If the bike were this heavy, how could I possibly have made it over the mountains of Ethiopia? It doesn’t seem possible. Yet, all the gear is the same – the same bike, same wheels, same tent, same sleeping bag, same mosquito net, same sleeping sheet, same water filter, and same everything. I had a camera and three lenses while in Ethiopia, too, and they were much heavier than my Olympus. I didn’t have a word processor like this NEO, but I carried a whole bunch of notebooks plus two cassette recorders and a lot of tapes. So the weight must have been the same. Why, then, does it feel so much heavier this time? It feels like I can’t make it up anything other than a flat road. Any hill defeats me. I have no idea what is making the difference. Maybe there is no difference, and I’m just not used to it yet. Perhaps I’m just attuned to the ease of driving my scooter in Taiwan.

Once I was inside Virac proper, the feeling I had that it was in the middle of nowhere and somewhere very special simply vanished. Once cycling down the roads with the tricycles and other traffic, I felt like I was right back in Legazpi or Tabaco. Now that I think about it, I don’t see many jeepneys. There are probably jeepneys that go to the nearby towns and back, but I don’t see any driving up and down the city streets themselves. That is something of a relief.

One thing I haven’t mentioned often – and one has to mention them when writing about the Philippines – is the roosters and the crowing. The Backpackers hostel in Legazpi was spared the crowing of roosters oddly enough. I could hear them from my hotel in Tabaco, but they seemed somewhat distant. On the ferry, though, I was surrounded by them. Lots of men had their prize fighting roosters in boxes and these roosters were crowing like mad all through the trip to Virac.

I had no idea where to go in Virac. I figured there had to be places to stay, and I simply set off and pedaled around. I didn’t get very far before a man called out to me and asked where I was going. I said that I didn’t know, and he said that in that case, I should just go with him. He was quite serious, and that got a smile and a laugh out of me. He got on his motorcycle and caught up with me and said the same thing. Why don’t I go with him? I said that I would, but I pointed out that I had no idea where he was going either. We both pulled over at this point and chatted for a while. He pointed out a couple of lodging houses nearby and then shook my hand goodbye as I left.

I rode my bike to the end of the town and then turned around to come back in. At that end of town, I spotted a very pleasant looking lodging house called Marem. From the outside, it looked to be beyond my limited budget, but I asked anyway. The normal rooms were a bit pricey, but they had single rooms with a shared bathroom for 250 pesos a night ($6). I asked to see one, and it was about what one would expect – essentially the size of a large closet. But it had a bed and a fan, and the common bathroom seemed okay, despite the presence of an immense spider corpse being devoured by a colony of speedy ants. One big problem with the room was that the window faced the main street, so the traffic noise would be pretty loud. But I figured I could live through that with my earplugs, and I took the room.

There seemed to be a dozen young women running the place and they did so in a very disorganized sort of fashion. They spoke English but they never seemed to be speaking to the main point at issue. Their brains seemed to be twittering around from point to point without ever coming to grips with anything. My bill was 250 pesos exactly, and I paid with a 500-peso bill. To my surprise, this caused a problem. They couldn’t change it. How can a hotel – and this was quite a large one with dozens of rooms – not be able to change a 500-peso note? It’s another one of those things. If I were working at a hotel like that, I would make it my business to make sure that we had change on hand all the time. But no one ever seems to think of that at these places. Perhaps it is not as easy as I imagine it to be.

After thinking these women a rather brainless bunch, I then managed to lock myself out of my room. I had to go down to the front desk and shamefacedly explain that I had locked my key inside the room. I thought it would be a simple matter of getting the master key, but it wasn’t that simple and the women had to get on the phone to find someone who could deal with the situation. I started to imagine having to pay for a new lock or a new door if they had to knock it down. After half an hour, someone must have shown up with a spare key, because I was let back inside.

Then it was time to have some lunch. I had some trouble on that front. I saw a few eateries on my ride around, but apparently you have to get the food fast. It was not even 1:00, and most of them were sold out and were shutting down. One place had some main dishes, but they had run out of rice. I started to think once more that I really might be at the end of the world.

I finally found a place that had a bit of food left. I got one plate of chicken asado for 25 pesos and one plate of rice. They also brought out a pitcher of ice water. I’m not worrying about the water at all anymore. I just drink whatever water I can get. It’s so hot that I can’t be choosey. Just have to hope I don’t get sick. So far I’ve been lucky. Can’t believe I’ve been in the Philippines for 10 days and I haven’t gotten sick. I usually get sick within the first 72 hours at the latest.

A big part of being in the Philippines – besides the jeepneys and roosters – is the radio. Radio stations are still a going concern and every town has local radio stations. They all play the same sappy music though – local and western pop hits and love ballads. And the commercials are crazy synthesized with lots of sound effects. It sounds like something I would have heard in Canada back in the 80’s on a cheap station. I’ve heard Adam Carolla make fun of the radio station patter quite a few times, and the radio stations here sound just like that. The commercials are also surprisingly specific and long. They don’t simply get your attention – they go through long lists of items for sale and often give the prices one by one by one hitting the word “pesos” in the same strange way. “Shampoo, 120 PESOS! Laundry soap, 45 PESOS!!! Plastic buckets, 15 PESOS!”

Now that I’m on Catanduanes, I’m not quite sure what to do. I had rough plans to ride my bike up the west coast, but I don’t know that I’m capable of that. I think the road would be too rough and steep and there is nothing out there in the way of accommodation other than those expensive beach resorts. Of course, that is why I have a tent. Aren’t I supposed to be this super-independent biker able to just set up my tent and camp? I think I’m that independent biker just in my mind and on paper plans. Real life is another thing altogether. I like being around people and being able to sit in a café with a cup of coffee. Sitting in a tent – sweltering away – in the middle of nowhere hardly seems like much fun. We’ll see what happens.

 

Tags: bike, Catanduanes Bike Trip, Cycling, Philippines Bike Trip 2013