Saturday February 20 2010 7:20 a.m.

I can feel my trip winding town. Today, I turn the front wheel of my motorcycle back toward Roxas. Craig was successful on his mission, and he reserved a cottage for me at Coco-Loco island Resort. It isn’t one of the nice cottages on the beach, but that’s okay. I’m only going to be there for two nights, and the whole point is to spend time snorkeling. I’m not sure what time the boat leaves in the morning, so I’m going to leave from San Vicente fairly soon – once I’ve packed and had a cup of coffee.

Yesterday was another fantastic day, thanks largely to Long Beach, my motorcycle, and Jason. I spent some time driving along the beach. This time the jellyfish that had washed up on the shore were immense. I took a few pictures of them with my foot beside them for scale. Knowing those monsters were out there in the water gave me some pause about going in, but the waves were really high and I had to go in. Craig was with me and we spent an hour bodysurfing the waves.

In the evening, I dropped by Jason’s cottages for a farewell beer. After a beer or two and it was dark, we hopped on the motorcycles and drove down to Panindigan. Jason was very interested in hiring Rose to clean his cottages once a week. He had the ulterior motive of getting a local girlfriend. The 22-year-old girlfriend he had in Nicaragua started off as his live-in maid. He figured the same thing could happen here, and the start was to hire Rose to do some casual cleaning. The age difference between them (18 and 50) is huge, but no one here really seems to think about that at all. On their part, they might just be thinking about the financial advantages of marrying a guy like Jason.

When we arrived in the village, we found Beck Beck and her friends having a Pina Colada party behind the bakery. We joined them and had a really good time. Someone went to get Rose and bring her there on a motorcycle. She looked very pretty and very young. I guess I forget what 18-year-olds look like, but she looked younger than 18 to me. It was a strange scene – sitting there in the dark drinking pitchers of Pina Colada with seven or eight of the matriarchs of the village – all of them acting as go-betweens as Jason courted the young girl. He got the idea at some point of inviting Rose out on his boat the next day. This meant that they had to find suitable escorts – hopefully someone who spoke English.

1:30 p.m. Coco-Loco Island

I left from San Vicente at 8:00 this morning. I had said my goodbyes to Jason and Craig and Beck Beck and Eric the night before, so I just drove out of town with no formalities. I’d paid my bill at the hotel the night before, and I think they charged me for five nights when I stayed six. I would have confessed and paid the extra, but trying to explain that sort of thing can do more harm than good. I just left it alone. If they caught the mistake, okay. If not, then I saved $20.

Big surprise, the weather was perfect. It is so unusual for me coming from Taiwan to be able to assume that every day the weather will be perfect. In Taiwan, it is the opposite. You assume it will rain, and you are pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t. Here it is sunny every day. You never have to think about rain.

I had strong mixed feelings as I left San Vicente, and I still have them now that I’m on Coco-Loco. I thought that I’d spent enough time there for this trip – five days and six nights. It seemed that it would be a shame to be on Palawan and not spend a day doing some snorkeling. That thought lay behind my decision to come to Coco-Loco. But I was extremely lucky in my choice of town for this trip. I had a great time in San Vicente. Every day I got to meet more of the local people and experience more of the local life. And on top of that, I had the world’s most beautiful beach all to myself. And I had made a good traveling friend in Jason. It was a shame to leave.

I had no doubts about the motorcycle ride, though. I knew I would enjoy that. The road from San Vicente to the national highway is rough and rocky and passes through some beautiful countryside and then through some pretty big hills. I spent a lot of time in first gear grinding up these steep hills and wondering all the time what it would have been like to ride my bicycle. I could have done it. I’ve certainly ridden on roads that were just as steep and just as rough, but it wouldn’t have been easy. It seemed almost like cheating to be having so much fun on the motorcycle.

Even driving down the national highway was fun. I could go at high speed, and everyone waved to me and called out to me like I was a rock star. I couldn’t just drive, though. I had to be very careful, as huge potholes would suddenly appear. Any one of them could have meant death if I’d hit them. It was a sobering thought, and it kept me focused on my driving. The pavement was also not completely finished and the road would go back to rock and dirt again and again. I also had learned to be careful when I hit a bridge. You never knew what kind of bumps and holes would be before and after a bridge.

I got to Roxas in an hour and a half, and I drove right to the dock to check in with the Coco-Loco people. I wasn’t surprised when Tina had no knowledge of any kind of a reservation for me. I told her that my friend had come the previous day and made a reservation in my name. She told me that my friend was already on Coco Loco. So she clearly had no idea what I was talking about. It’s strange that they can be that disorganized. I don’t think I could get things that screwed up if I tried. It looked for a while like I wasn’t going to be able to go to Coco-Loco. But Tina got on the cell phone and though I never found out what happened, I got a cottage in the end. and I was told that the boat was gong to leave at 11:30.

That left me with an hour and a half to kill and I spent most of it just driving around the hills around Roxas. Then I decided to have something to eat at this little restaurant beside the Coco-Loco office. That was something of a shock and I really started to regret my decision to leave San Vicente. The problem was that all the mini-vans going back and forth to El Nido made a habit of stopping at this dock and letting their passengers out to get a meal and a drink. In short, I was in tourist central. It was a real shock. I had gone from a typical town with almost no one but Filipinos to Grand Central Station of fat tourists and backpackers. I didn’t like it at all. It was interesting to see that scene, though. It made me exceedingly glad to have rented my motorcycle once more. I couldn’t imagine being jammed into one of those mini-vans with ten other tourists being shepherded from spot to spot. I guess if you were with friends, it would be fun. But with the kind of things I like to do, it would have been terrible. I was worried that a lot of these dozens and dozens and dozens of people were going to Coco-Loco. Thankfully, they weren’t. When it came time to get on the boat, the only passengers were me and one middle-aged Italian couple. Once I was on the Coco-Loco boat and we were heading out into the ocean, I felt much better. I still regretted having left San Vicente, but I could tell it wasn’t going to be all bad.

It didn’t seem to take very long to get to Coco-Loco. A woman was waiting for us on the beach and welcomed us to the island. She led us to the main building, where I found a coconut with a straw in it waiting for me. I had to sign a release form and then they took me to my little cottage. The cottage is nothing special. They had none of the beach-front cottages available, so I was given a small one back in the trees. It has the necessities, but nothing more. A bed, a mosquito net, two towels, and two plastic chairs make up the whole place. The one thing I miss is a hammock. The beach-front cottages have hammocks. They are comfortable places to hang out and read. My cottage has nothing like that. But I guess I’ll survive for two nights.

I dumped my stuff in the room and then went out into the water for a swim. I was still feeling a bit weird being on a resort, but I was starting to get used to the idea. Why not be pampered? Another odd thing for me is that almost everyone on the island is German. And that’s okay. I just wish the men didn’t wear those teeny tiny black bikinis. I can’t get used to those things. Their bodies also seem to be an unhealthy shade of suntan – an oily bronze. The bronze seems too deep to be a natural skin tone.

 

 

 

Tags: Beck Beck, Coco Loco, Palawan Motorbike Trip, Pina Colada, San Vicente