Tako á Feira

Here I am again with another article, this talks about the past Christmas holidays in Palawan…

The day after arriving at Cocoloco Island, then with a bit more light, we could check what kind of paradise have we got to. The previous article about Palawan finished with a picture of food, and as it should be, this is beginning with another one, breakfast:

Bread, pinneaple, cheese and scrambled eggs

And another one:

Fried egg, fish and cucumber

After having breakfast at the beach:

Paradise

And another one…

The day was really “tough”, you know… scuba diving, sunbathing, swimming in tropical water…

Baywatch

Sun set at Paradise

Because of the size of the island, there was no much people there, just some tourists like us and the natives living there:

Some natives living at the island

Minifilipinas

This was the hut where we slept:

We spent Christmas at Cocoloco island. There, the “resort” natives set up a small Christmas party where everybody was welcome and food was free! what food!

Roasted fish

Crabs

Roasted suckling pig

Peculiar party with dancing natives…

And the musig brought by “PALM RADIO”

The day after Christmas was the last there and we headed to the airport from where we would flight to Manila to spend some days visiting the capital of Philippines and our “icexians” pals.

Goodbye Cocoloco

After travelling from Osaka to Philippines, we spent one night at the capital: Manila. The next day we had the flight to Palawan. I’m going to comment nothing about Manila now, I’ll dedicate a whole article later on.

Palawan is an island between Malaysia and Philippines that stands out because of its crystalline waters and amazing beaches. Furthermore, being far from the capital, it’s not so tourist as Boracay and it can be seen the poverty of a lot of villages. This is the route we followed in Palawan:

We landed in Puerto Princesa and the first thing we saw was a really minimum airport… in fact I can’t yet believe how the pilot could land in such a runway. When the plane stopped we were about 20 meters of being out of the runway! Impressive!

Once off the plane, we headed to the luggage place, which I don’t know how to call, so I’ll leave this pictures to speak for themselves:

After the first shock seeing the cutting edge luggage distribution system, we headed to the inmigration ofice:

Fine… after registering at the inmigration department we proceeded to exit the hangar, and of course, we found “the ultimate transport method” on the island:

I bet you think it looks like a very reliable, trustworthy and environmental correct transport method… Three people could get on that thing, with 3 huge backpacks… I don’t know how, but we did it, and there were spare room for more luggage! I think that physics are not working as they should in this place…

From Puerto Princesa, we rent a van with driver to get to Roxas, from where we would take a ship to get to that sort of resort located in a 2 square km island. This van:

I won’t tell the story of the bargaining we had to suffer because it would be infinite. Just mention that in Philippines you can’t go to the toilet without haggle first.

After several hours to fulfil 100Km we stopped at a small village to rest a bit and I took some pictures:

Once in Roxas, after waiting 1 hour for the boat to come (things move slow in Philippines…)

…we headed to Coco Loco Island! Where we would spend some days getting a good tan (and sunburn of course) and drinking coco juice. When we get to the island, we had a green coconut opened and waiting for us to drink it while waiting for the dinner:

I ordered crabs… tasty tasty! with garlic rice and a side of banana. The night ended with some freshly mades fruit shakes with a bit of Tanduay, the typical rum of Philippines.

To be continued…

Once finished the Japanese Course, today I’m taking a bus to Osaka and tomorrow a flight to Manila. I have no time now to sketch all the route I’m going to follow, but I can say I’ll visit Manila, Palawan and Boracay. Until next year there won’t be more posts.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope you don’t get a cold, and think that I’ll be drinking from a coconut in the “Asian Caribbean” in Christmas (hahaha).