The hotel was pretty basic, but the A/C worked and jet lag was starting to kick in. We ended up crashing out around 6pm and waking up at 4am. We ate at the hotel - Pancit, Longanisa and Lechon. We got charged double for all foods and services but at that point, it was time to go. We hit Manila airport, Terminal Three and our next issue was no ATM on the terminal and no vendors took card. We went hungry to avoid burning through all our cash.
Air Philippines has a brand new fleet of jets built on Filippino sizes. Lets just say that I couldn't put my knees forward. We hit Palawan and caught a Trike to a bank. Cash in hand, it was time to head to the bus terminal to catch our Jeepney to Sabang. Jeepneys are by far the most economical transport we have found.
For the uninitiated, Jeepneys harken back to WWII era jeeps, left here by the US forces. While the original Jeeps have been retired, Jeepneys are built out of anything resembling a Jeep and then decorated wildly. The front ends are modified with scrap metal into the iconic Jeep grill and then the rest varies between rusted out bus hulks or chromed out displays from modern Jeep frames. Ours was the former. I am very conflicted on Jeepneys, on the whole. I love the ride, but hate riding in them. I have done four 3 hour rides and thoroughly enjoy them when I don't have 4 children and three bags, only one of them mine, sitting on me.
So, we got to Sabang in the late afternoon. We didn't have a reservation anywhere, but had an idea where we wanted to stay. DabDab Cottages was booked up, but we went looking elsewhere. Our unfortunate luck worked out that there was only "1" room available in the town. We took it, because the other options didn't look good. We took it, at three times the normal rate because we didn't have a choice. This is a pretty popular scheme. This boarding house has a terrible location and preys on the travellers who have limited options. They promise power and A/C for the absurd rate they charge, but cut the power at will and heaven help those who stay more than one night. We had power initially in our room, but the occupied rooms on either side had their power shut off.
Go figure, we only stayed one night. The following morning, we were chased 150 yards by the manager of the property trying to sell us tours, meals, vans, his first born child, his kidney, boat rides, you name it. DabDab was still full (it was consistently booked every night) and we went to another set of cottages. This one only charged us half again what our neighbors paid. We even had a nice sitting area, with a view of 10 derelict cottages and a 12 year old girl nursing a baby. Who sat outside our room for all daylight hours, including a massive deluge. Molly and I named her "Creepy".
At this point, we had gotten quite good at hitting a place up for breakfast and waiting until a room had opened. This is how we got into DabDab at last. DabDab gets pretty much nothing but praise. Food was good, portions were big, the cottage was nice. There were some issues with animal noise, but all in all, a very positive experience.
After all the drama of getting into DabDab and settled, we wrote off Port Barton and El Nido. We did finally make it to the beach, though. The beach was very nice. Nice and big, not too crowded. There was a pretty consistent shore break which got bigger towards sunset. So - me being me, I had to do something dumb. The first day on the beach I was using gifted sunscreen. I ended up getting burnt. Nothing too bad, I have had much worse. But when we got back to the cottage that evening, the mosquitos were out pretty bad. We had brought some high grade bug spray, so I doused myself with it. You know what happens when you apply 100% DEET on a medium grade sunburn? I do, now. It's a full on chemical burn. At this point, nearly 2 weeks later, I am mostly healed. I kind of took up residence in our hammock. For me, beach time became 4pm and on, when the sun was starting to go down.
Since I didn't get to play as much as I wanted, I had time to observe and think. The most notable thing about Sabang isn't what's happening, it is what isn't. Walking around town, most of the places to stay have downsized. Cottages are derelict and closed up. In some cases, entire resorts have wasted away. Even DabDab, which stayed consistently busy, has the shell of a much larger resort on the back of their property. All commercial craft has to be labeled as to its use, we found out. There are a fleet of catamarans that sit on the reef because they are supposed to be used for passengers only. Only 3-4 boats go out fishing on a daily basis. There is no power available other than generator, no phone lines or traditional utilities, yet a cell tower was set up so everyone has cellphones.
We got up early on Molly's birthday to do the nature hike, which is the back way to the Underground River. We hiked around the major beach and found a smaller beach on the other side. There were "No Trespassing" and "Beware of Dogs" signs posted at the treeline, and we didn't get too close. We still had a pack of dogs sicced on us as we were crossing the beach towards the nature walk.
When we hit the nature walk, it was marked as out of service indefinitely for repairs. As we sat on the rocks trying to decide what to do, we watched 4 locals come out of the trail and three more head up it. At that point, we figured we might as well give it a shot. The climb was a little intimidating, but we headed up and hit the ridgeline. When we reached the ridgeline, the path was in heavy disrepair. We plugged on for quite a while, but turned back when we thought we might have to explain our presence to the Underground River crews. We made it all the way back and ran into a guy in a Security T-shirt at the entrance to the path. Fortunately, he just tried to sell us on the Sabang Zipline. We managed to make it back to the tourist area without anymore dog attacks.
Happy 32nd Birthday Molly!
As you can see from the pictures, Palawan is gorgeous. It is incredibly diverse ecologically and the weather is great. What we kept running into was this: Everything that is on Palawan, we had seen, if not always done right, but done differently and with more forethought on the Hawaiian islands. The development of Maui, the Big Island and Kauai are particularly pointed here. Everywhere we looked, we could see the comparisons and it was hard not to make them. When you can go to Hana and see power, sewer, phone lines and ecologically sound management practices in a very remote location on the most remote population center on Earth, it is hard not to make the comparisons. This does not excuse the mistakes that have been made on the Hawaiian Islands. The fight for Honolua Bay comes to mind.
We had some fantastic beach days on Palawan and I am a firm believer that all experiences on this expedition are valuable, not just the perfect ones. We tried very hard not to let our experiences at the start of our excursion jade us. I am still a fan of the Jeepney, I just suggest not riding one when you are 6'3" and sun/chemical burned.
