Back to basics

People i met here, who contributed to and improved my trip: Julia (Russia)

After a night in Dumaguete, the following day we caught a jeepney to the village of Malatapay, from where we could catch a boat to Apo Island. Unfortunately there are very few boats making the run and we had to wait for 3 hours whilst other passengers turned up. We spent this time playing Ludo and drinking a couple of beers, so it wasn't a complete waste. Oh, Julia also had her tongue bitten by an ant, clearly she hadn't been satisfied with rice and fish and was looking for some extra protein!

The journey over took around an hour and we made it to the island at 4pm. We found Marie's homestay with the help of the boat captain, who also happened to be her son! We were shown our room and toilet, but remained curious as to where the shower was.

It was at this moment we wondered whether coming here was such a wise move. For not only was there no electricity (except a generator for a couple of hours a night), but also no running water for a shower! There wasn't much we could do, so we decided to head down to the dive shops and check out their prices. This was the second shock as the prices were more expensive than anywhere else in the Philippines, even though we had been told to come here for good cheap diving! Was it too far to swim back to the mainland...

We found a very nice resort serving good food and set in a pretty alcove and settled in for the night. Ok, we settled in until 9pm, when the islands generator packed in! We figured that we would use the early night to our advantage, as this would mean we would wake up refreshed the following day, right? WRONG! cock-a-doodle-doooooooo, cock-a-doodle-doooooooo, cock-a-doodle-doooooooo, cock-a-doodle-doooooooo! Feeling a little woozy, i reached over to check the clock, my eyes must be deceiving me, 4am.

cock-a-doodle-doooooooo, cock-a-doodle-doooooooo. I think you get the picture. This carried on for the next 4 hours before we finally gave in and went out for breakfast completely exhausted.

We headed down to the resort we had been to the previous day and hired out some snorkelling equipment to check out the nearby reef and see what fish we could spot. The reef was really fantastic with beautiful soft and hard colours of all shapes, sizes and colours. I also managed to see a wide species of fish, including trumpet fish, moorish idols and triggerfish. After an hour i headed back to land, where we had an energy filled spaghetti dish for lunch.

The afternoon was filled with more snorkelling around the rocky headland and i saw some nice schools of fish and a disintegrating bag containing 500 peso, which paid for our lunch and some drinks.

Beats fishing anyway! We spent the rest of the afternoon doing some sunbathing and pitting our wits at the ever addictive game of Ludo. We headed back to our homestay all salty and desperately craving a shower. We asked Marie's daughter if there was any way possible we could get some fresh water and were delighted when we got the reply that we could. As it had rained the previous night, their tank had been refilled and we had the luxury of a 2 minute shower to clean up. To celebrate we went back to the resort and i even put a shirt on to celebrate my new found cleanliness! When we headed home for bed, we met a fisherman who had just returned with a huge fish, freshly caught and to be sold the following day. It was a cool end to a very nice day.

We were woken by the cock-a-doodle-doing again the following day and at 6.

30am decided that to save our sanity, we must get the morning boat back to Malatapay. We boarded the 'maximum 7 persons' outrigger and were surprised to see how much cargo they had crammed on, including many huge, freshly caught fish. This surprise turned into slight horror as they started to cram on one person after another. We eventually teetered out to sea carrying 21 brave souls, as the engine coughed and spluttered all the way to Malatapay and safety.