Jeremy (his blog is great..) googled a reservation for a night stay on a beach resort and we courageously made our way there. Once arriving at the port in Batangas, some 'helpful' guys (10 to be exact) grabbed our luggage and told us they had a private boat for us to take us to our beach resort. Everything was moving so quickly and they told us it'd be faster than the public ferry so somehow we agreed and followed the guys with our bags. And followed them to a really (I mean, really) sketch door. Not the official port entrance. No. This was the side metal door in the wall to protect against pirates I'm guessing. It was bolted with a padlock. But once one of the 10 guys got the key, we followed the men with our bags along a narrow ledge with some poor huts. Our 'private boat' turned out to be a sketchy banca (small boat of the Philippino nature - narrow with side balancing beams).
Soon we were on our way to (hopefully) Puerto Galera and our beach house of Coco Beach Island Resort. We moved at a very quick pace of about 10-15 mph on the open ocean basically. Thankfully we had some sunscreen because we didn't have a tarp covering the boat (most of these bancas have such). During the 1.5 hr trip, we saw some dolphins and flying fish which was a real treat!! Interestingly, Dad, Jeremy and I all thought of what we would do if the two boaters decided to overpower us and take our stuff.. You'll have to read Jeremy's blog for his decision - mine was that I would have no problem punching the guys (I assume that I can throw a mean punch... ha) and knocking them out.
We finally reached our little beach resort and discovered a real treat. Not too crowded, everyone was so nice, and an excellent view. All the structures are made from natural materials and looks very native. Our room overlooked the ocean and with the palm trees and other vegetation, made it quite a wonderful sight. We were truly living like island royalty (including a service family that lived there to 'serve' our room and another), everything was perfect - except perhaps the lack of air conditioning. Yikes. But in the night, the fans and breeze made it bearable under the mosquito netting (this was probably my favorite part - you always see netting in movies but I actually used one!! lol)
After settling in and eating lunch, we took a scuba diving lesson and the pool and headed to the reef. After falling back from the boat, we proceeded to see some wonderful sea grass that was promised us, and then low and behold, giant sea turtles!! They were 3 ft at least and swam along and right in front of me swam to the surface. Amazing. We proceeded to dive and saw beautiful fish and coral. Words cannot describe really but it was beautiful. Dad says it was better than Hawaii. (I'll have to check on that myself later this summer) My favorite underwater creature was the purple starfish.
We returned to the beach and read our books by the pool, watched the sun set on the beach, ate dinner, and participated in a frog race (which we lost). We were so tired that we just went to bed in our mosquito netting (again, so cool - I felt like ). Thus ended our day.
~Elizabeth
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| Our private boat |
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| Dad and the sea turtle |
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| Sitting on the beach for sunset |
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