Philippine Travel Notes

This story would have been about my Culaba visit - only. But, unforeseen circumstances prevented me from doing my 'usually extensive enough' walk around center of town. So to make the short story long (yes, me ganun), let me include places in Kawayan, Almeria, up until I reached the day's pitstop, Naval! How's this for starters: this was as we left Caibiran going to the circumferential road to reach Culaba. Unfortunately I was not able to ask-around what mountain that is. There were no human beings to ask in the first place hehe! We were in the back roads, the rice fields of Caibiran, which, my driver said was a panoramic (OMG yes, I agree) shortcut to the circumferential road, so we could reach Culaba faster. We passed by old narrow but good enough roads with no people but fantastic views of vast ricefields. In no time, we reached where the cross country road intersects with the circumferential road.., Yes, turning left here is a quick way to Naval, even passing v...

Until now, I shake my head knowing I missed roaming opportunities at this three towns. Blame it on the time of day (noon), some rain (on a hot summer day) and the darkening skies (that looked like evening was befalling too soon)! Oh well. Anyway... Like it was from Naval to Almeria, just probably also five minutes after we left Talahid Beach we already reached the town of Kawayan and OMG what a quiet town we even joked it was a ghost town! There was literally no human being in sight. Literally! Well, it was just about 1PM and people were probably either in their homes to have lunch or still in their homes for a siesta after lunch. We tried circling some of the streets for a human being to ask, but we could not see any! My question was if there was any boat I could ride crossing to that smaller island which is the town of Maripipi. We finally saw a manong at what looked like a boat landing or wharf and he told me that most folks with boats were either resting or already at Maripipi to...

This was it! The real purpose why I was in Naval. Roam around the whole island! How did I plan to go about this? That was a challenge. With me alone, to hire a van or any 4-wheeled vehicle was out of the question. Expensive and I had no assurance it would have been practical (I heard roads on the east and northeast were not yet quite done). But taking it from my Camiguin experience, I toyed at the idea of renting a motorbike and hiring a motorbike riding guide! Hard to find but, thankfully made possible by one of the waiters cum room boy of Marvin's Seaside Inn itself! Where I was staying, yes! Therefore, closer to home! Maybe they had a hard time looking for what I wanted and they probably said 'let's just do it ourselves'! So off we went a roaming, the waiter in his own bike (as my guide) while I on a rented motorcycle (owned by his colleague, a cook?, am not sure now). I knew they are not experts as to places or things to see in the island (by the nature of thei...