Island Time: 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.