Days of Tropic Thunder

Out on the road in Cebu: make sure your seatbelt is tightly fastened, that is if one exists, most vehicles don't have them. If you aren't covering your eyes or ducking under the seat from the countless close calls with trucks, motorbikes, dogs and children....and street vendors...and horse drawn carriages....and food cart bikes, you actually get to see some crazy stuff. See below.

Yes, that's an automatic riffle.



He is very relaxed for doing 45 mph.

  

The people blurred in the background are part of a drum corps parade marching down the
middle of the street with traffic speeding by on both sides.



Tricylces (three people sit on the bike, and as many as can fit in the side car)



7 people, several bags of groceries, 2 motrobikes

 

Pastry bike



Just long enough



 

This mattress will be good for wind resistance

Tricycle- not nearly as crowded as we've seen



Video of driving in Cebu City. About 30 sec in you will get to see

the free-for-all that is a typical Philippine intersection. Notice the

motorbikes weaving in between large trucks and jeepneys. The Jeepney

barker clinging to the back railing in flip-flops and the bizzare wet child

standing in the middle of everything. The guy who shows up in the bottom

of the frame is a motocyclist who nearly rammed into us trying to cut

across traffic.

Christmas In September

Yes the holiday season has begun in the Philippines. Radio stations have begun the countdown: only 105 days until Christmas! Little Drummer Boy can be heard playing in the lobby of our office and even the occasional 'Merry Christmas' is said by one of the local employees. To top it off, department stores have already started their Christmas displays which apparently grow considerably as Dec 25th approaches. I can only hope we make it to December to see what the final month leading to Christmas brings.

Christmas Decor at the Dept Store and yes those are people actually buying something already.

The River Wild

We made our way down to Moalboal this weekend, Panagsama Beach to be exact for a river climbing adventure. I don’t think we anticipated the drive there to be perhaps the most terrifying part of our trip. Our very capable, but very fast driver, Sir Jay, made record time to our resort but not without about 20 close calls that left us all gripping our seats and grasping for air. But for him this was probably just another day of driving in the Philippines. After enjoying a delicious meal at our Thai/Indian/Indonesian/Chinese/Filipino restaurant we went to one of the local bars and decided to try one of their ‘signature’ cocktails. As Red Horse Beer and rum and cokes are pretty much the staples here, we found that they didn’t actually have the ingredients to make most of the cocktails on the menu. They were finally about to scrape together an odd concoction of ingredients and make drinks like the Ning Ning, which we think was coffee and coke with some sort of alcohol. Luckily there was a group of Cebu City college students celebrating their recent basketball victory who poured us some drinks from their large beer bottles and invited us to dance and sing karaoke with them. We started the next day with a delicious ‘American’ and European breakfast at our hotel and then boarded our all-terrain action-adventure vehicle for the river climb. After about an hour of hiking and lots of sweating we had finally reached the BEGINNING of the river climb. Now granted the scenery was amazing, it was an indescribable feeling of joy when we were finally able to jump in the cool, crystal clear water of the river. We swam our way upstream through rocks and rapids, climbing almost every waterfall we came to. Fortunately, we had two guides with us to show us the way, but this didn’t necessarily make gripping onto wet rocks with a waterfall gushing over you any easier. It was tiring and dangerous but the reward of seeing the beautiful pristine river and its surroundings were well worth it. Plus it finished with a delicious barbecue meal at the end of the climb; probably the best meal we’ve had since we’ve been here. As the saying goes, the pictures just don’t do it justice, but they can give you a taste of what it was like and will help remind us of the awe struck feeling we had during the whole climb. We certainly hope to be back for another adventure soon, but for now we’re just thankful we made it back home safe and sound with only a few scrapes and bruises to show for it.

Our Action-Adventure Vehicle

Climbing one of the many waterfalls

Taking a break, moments before we jumped off that rock into the river and climbed that waterfall

When it rains...it Floods!

As it is the rainy season here, it is not unusual to get rain and storms almost every day. Brown outs (the lights going out for a shorter period of time then a “black-out”) happen several times a month…and usually at night when you really don’t want the AC to turn off. In Mactan, the rain is usually harmless and often cools down the normally humid, hot day, or it makes it more humid….really it is the flip of a coin. Or it results in wet jeepney cushions and some giant puddles. Well, the other day we went out on a sourcing trip (sourcing basically means shopping for things for the movie set) and learned what a heavy rain in Cebu is like. Heavy rain in Cebu (Mandaue to be exact) = Flood. People were standing on the bus stop bench to keep from being in knee deep water, a taxi got stuck in almost window deep water and several boys had to push it out, and huge waves were sent up the curbs into stores and shops. (The one vehicle that did make it through the high waters was the giant steam roller, which just happened to be coming down the road with everyone else…haha.) The flooding was definitely an experience and caused us to have to drive waay out of the way to get to our first location. All we could think was….I am glad I am in this van instead of the local jeepney!