Camiguin (Day 2) – July 31, 2009

There are times, that things don’t go as planned. Sometimes when you plan trips in advance, one never is able to predict Mother Nature’s moods and how she will behave at certain points. And thus was our experience today. Normally, even if it is raining in Manila, the weather in Southern Philippines is quite good with a decent showing of sun and clear skies.

(For Day 1: http://lakwatsero.me/?p=147/)

As is typically the case, I woke up earlier than my travel mates, and decided to take a stroll around the resort. (http://www.parasbeachresort.com/)

It was actually a nice resort, thought it had no beach to speak of. While I was taking pictures, it wasn’t raining too much. Just windy.

 

I walked out into the breakwater to take some shots of the waves crashing against the rocks…. though I couldn’t get my timing right. See that floating hut in on the left? This video should best illustrate Mother Nature’s mood at the time.

With the waves the way they were, half of the group didn’t want to take the boat out to White Island… which was barely visible at this time. Which was all well and good as after breakfast, the rains came.

So we decided to scrap the whole idea of going to White Island. Sigh.

It was around 10:30… the weather got us up late so we decided check-out , get a leisurely lunch and catch our 3pm trip back to Cagayan de Oro via the Sea Cat.

 

We wanted a nice seafood place, so we were brought to the J&A Fishpen Resort and Restaurant.

It was a nice place. Had the weather been nicer, I would have opted to eat out on the decks over the water.

So we ordered food like there was no tomorrow! On the top of my personal requests. Was crab. They had to fish the crab out of the a small pen… guaranteed freshness.

Since we were eating crab… they gave us little wooden mallets for the crab shells…

And mine came in the shape of a hammer. Complete with the nail removal thingy at the end.

And then the food came.

Halaan soup.

 

Fried Prawns

 

Steamed Crabs

and Chili Crabs

Adobong Pusit.

We also ordered Inihaw na Liempo… but I was eating and didn’t have the presence of mind to take its photo

After our meal, we lingered around the resort till around 2:30 before proceeding to the pier.

And now the excitement begins…

When we got to the pier, we found out that the SeaCat was cancelled. Because of the weather, it had never left Bohol to get to Cagayan de Oro, etc. etc. So we had no recourse but to take the ferry. The same ferry we took the day before from Balingoan. The downside was, unlike the SeaCat which was supposed to take us directly to Cagayan de Oro, we would need to take a 2 hour bus ride back to CDO from Balingoan.

Ferdie was all gloom and doom and wanted to stay till the next day. The rest of us wanted to leave.

The next 2 hours was quite an experience. The boat rocked left and right, up and down. It was a challenge keeping sane at the moment. I was busy eating the Pastel I bought at the pier and dug up a small bag of Chippy to divert my attention.

During the second hour on the boat, all the bobbing around got to me… and for the first time in my life I experienced motion sickness. I was puking and puking… luckily they were handing out plastic bags for such purpose… I consumed two.

I re-tasted in reverse order everything I had eaten. First I re-tasted the Chippy I had. Then the pastel. And finally, I tasted the crab again. Haaay.

I was so queezy when we got back on land, Erick bought some White Flower for me to sniff.

The next two hours was also interesting for me. We crammed on board a bus – with all ou
r belongings – and went standing room back to Cagayan de Oro. As it was on land, it was actually a lot better than the boat ride.

We then spent the evening eating and shopping at the Cagayan de Oro ukay-ukay in the Divisoria and capped the evening with a 2 hour massage.

The end to an exciting and very eventful day.

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