Palawan Day 2 - The Road less traveled by water buffalo's...

So as my bride foreshadowed, we embarked on our next little known adventure to the promise lands of El Nido, "The North", for you non-espanol speakers. The van with 9 original seats (and five welded additionally that would fit our cousin Jack or Hannah very well but intended by the shuttle company for adults, but I digress...) shows up amidst the deluge at our eccentric little inn. They throw our luggage into the odd spaces throughout the van in between other random tourists and take us to places unknown but the driver and his 14 year old helper.




We arrive at a rooster infested car port area to reload luggage to the roof while ever so carefully being dropped in the mud and chucked up top to the teenager who wraps all meticulously in the remnants of a tarp and 30 meters of twine that has been tested to incur 2 lbs. of pressure before exceeding its tinsel. How proud he was of his fine job! He even earned a smoke from his approving boss and a smile!







Kirst and I were really smart...and a bit lucky to ride in front so we could see the onslaught of what was to come. With our backpacks and water bottles placed in strategic locations to lock us in, we readied ourselves for the roller coaster, I mean van ride, up to El Nido. We were surrounded by "the sniffler"...who wouldn't accept tissues from anyone and would prefer to push the phlegm back and forth as opposed to remove it from his system; the driver who at one point asked DT if he wanted to drive after shaking his head to stay awake; and the human saw mill that obviously stayed awake all last night to enjoy the serenity we experienced.

I will be posting some fun videos of the ride on FLickr, there's a link at the homepage of our blog, if you'd like to "feel" the fun we had.

We made it to our first pitstop in a time that seemed more like virtual time travel of minutes, really took three hours. We stopped at a local seaside venue that some local jewelry vendors may have seen white folk before and met us at our van door awaiting our taste in bracelets and rings to be met with our wallets. We unfortunately had packed the cash too far away and tried to explain ourselves without much dignity...well I did anyways, Kirsten was much more benevolent than I.

We then hopped back in much to our butts chagrin and got settled for more snoring, sniffling and side to side head bobbing! Not more than three minutes, we embraced the local flair of driving....dirt roads! Now this gave us the complete experience. Our driver probably believes in God, he definitely believes in efficiency, he believes in smiling all the time. However, he does not believe in evasive action of pot holes. He tried numerous times to argue with the laws of gravity and go with Newtons first law of motion...a body in motion stays that way, even when met with a diagonal slope or vertical obstacle.

We only ran over one dog, we think only one, along our way through several villages. It seemed that the brakes just wouldn't, or couldn't, work and the only mechanism other than the gas and steering wheel that worked was the horn; trust me, this is good news. We enjoyed the remainder of the rain forrest that we saw, striking views of the coast, and most importantly planting our feet on the ground free of worry or tensing in our stomachs.

All and all, we can't wait to do it again tomorrow!