Landed safe and sound in Kalibo in the evening, proceeded to
get a bus, then boat, then trike to our hostel. Stayed at MNL Borocay which is
big, lots of places to lounge about and socialise, and comfy bunks a bit like
your own pod in those Japanese hotels.
The first morning we were up early as I was adamant we were
going to get all the way back to Kalibo for the Ati-Atihan festival, supposedly
the biggest and most celebrated in the Philippines. After a long walk along the
beach up to the port, boat and bus, we ground to a halt in traffic trying to
enter Kalibo about 3km out of town, so we jumped off and walked. When we got
there, we found why traffic was so bad; about 70% of the roads were shut,
filled instead with people, stalls selling drinks and food or toys and masks,
and loads of processions with people dancing, wearing masks and costumes and
banging the crap out of lots of drums. Each procession had its own banner, and
at first we thought this individual churches, but there were companies and
shops with their own too. A bit like your corner shop having all its staff
dressed up and veering for your business to get your Sunday paper there by smashing
a load of drums!
It was great fun, and we got loads of great photos of us
dancing with the people in processions. It seems we were a bit of a rarity too,
as quite a few people asked us to pose in photos with them, which we happily
obliged to. We got away from the immediate noise for a bit in the park which
had loads of food and drink stalls, then plunged back in. When we were done, we
wandered in the direction the bus would travel in hope to flag one down. Quite
a few locals had the same idea, and it didn’t seem to be working, so we walked
back into town and found a minibus station, and hopped on one. Every bus had
about 3x the capacity trying to cram themselves on, so this was why none were
stopping for us before; they were already crammed to the gills.
Got back to the island and walked home, stopping for some
food and few beers en route.
In the morning, we had high hopes for the weather, and were
pleasantly surprised to see some big breaks in the clouds, so we headed to the
beach where we spent the day.
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| Chilling on the roof |
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| Happy hour Mango Daiquoris! |
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| What 30seconds exposure, a torch and some sweet wrappers can produce. |
To be honest, we pretty much repeated this every day. Due to
its abundance of tourists, everything is priced to the hilt, but we found a
local place serving a 3 course meal for £2 each, and happy hour cocktails made
with loads of liquor and fresh fruit for little over 50p each, so we returned a
lot. We went wandering a lot, I looked into kite surfing, but found balked at
the £100+ they wanted for 3 hours, and met a few nice people and few douchebags
(the latter sadly from England), but on the whole it was a good time mostly
spent sunning ourselves and enjoying the weather! At night we drank cocktails,
wandered along the beach watching fire shows, and pissing around with the
camera, a gorillapod, a torch, and some sweet wrappers.
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| Jo (shot at f2.0) |
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