The bus came to a stop, after heading out to the middle of nowhere for a couple of hours on Busuanga Island. We looked out the window and there was pretty much nothing around. Fern looked at me with a look of total uncertainty and asked me what we should do.
“This is our stop. Let’s get off.” I tried to sound confident that this was where we should be but really I had no idea what we would find. We reluctantly got our bags and laughed as we got off the bus, knowing that there wouldn’t be a bus going the other way until the next day. We could end up camping vagabond style with no food and little water if this didn’t work out. I was tracking us on a GPS mapping app on my phone so I could see that there was a road ahead leading to the shore and I had a hunch that there might be something worthwhile there.
When we got to the shore we found an amazing place that we ended up staying at for much longer than we expected – a beautiful bed-and-breakfast/guesthouse establishment right on the water. The building itself is a work of art which was created by the Swedish owner and run by his wife and a handful of locals, all of them incredibly nice. Because we ended up staying there so long we had the opportunity to get to know some of them a little bit which was great.
The place is on a shallow bay, protected by a handful of islands from the bigger waves of the open sea. We took a kayak out for a couple of afternoons to a gorgeous secluded beach and some easily accessible reefs for our first tastes of wonderful snorkeling. Huge exotic shells were scattered on the beach. No tours, nobody else around. It was amazing. This was also my first foray into the world of underwater photography. You’ll have to forgive the image quality. I’m a beginner.
The patio in front of our room was a perfect place to watch the stunning sunsets over the water, and the nightly ritual of the fruit bats coming out to feed. Just after the sun went down we could see a cloud of dots rising from the islands off on the horizon. Tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of giant fruit bats slowly rose into the reddening sky and crossed the bay, flying right over us to the inland hills to feed on the abundant fruit. I’ve never seen anything like it.
We could have stayed here much longer. Time didn’t seem to exist. It was so relaxing and the people were so warm and welcoming and there was so much beauty to soak up. They made it really difficult to leave.
jim@snorkelbandits.com