Before arriving in Boracay...or I should say, as part of our 24 hour travelling experience to get to Boracay, one of our stops was in Roxas where we caught a ferry to Caticlan. We arrived from Manila in Roxas at 6 am. We sat in the ferry port, which didn't leave until 10 am, and hung out until we found a small restaurant that served the BEST breakfast I've had here in the Philippines. It was called tapsilog...which is marinated beef strips and garlic rice with a fried egg. We've had it a couple of different times since Roxas, but Roxas was definitely the best and the cheapest...Only P50! that's like...$1.02!!! But upon finishing our meal and enjoying our coffee...we noticed the background music and thought we had to take note...
Yummy Tapsilog (Beef Tapa)
A little explanation of our journey to Boracay. We planned to get here by RoRo Bus or Van or something of that nature. Which is where you drive in a bus (well we thought it would be a bus but ended up being a van) and then that bus gets on a ferry and then you get back on the bus and drive and ferry and drive and ferry and so on until you get to where you need to be. So our first leg is getting picked up from Friendly's (our hostel in Manila) by a black 9 passenger cargo van with tented windows by two Filipino guys who really didn't speak English. We are the first to get picked up at 6:30 pm and our "VAN" is supposed to leave for Batangas at 8 where we will catch the ferry. We then spend the next 3 1/2 hours driving around Manila picking up more and more people until we are riding 15 deep in this van with all of our luggage packed on top. It's now around 10pm and we're still in Manila! The whole time Rodney and I are like WTF is going on and "is this right?" "what are we doing?" Finally we pick up a young girl who speaks English and we ask her what's going on and is this right? and she informs us that we are now on Filipino time and that not to worry we will get there eventually. So we then head out for Batangas which is a 3 hour van ride from Manila. We then take the van onto a ferry, get out and spend 3 hours taking the ferry to Mindoro. Once we port in Mindoro it takes a good hour for everything to get off the ferry and everyone to load back on the van which is still packed with 15 people and Rodney and I kept 2 of our small bags with us that contained valuable materials, like the laptop and passports and such, so we had those under our feet along with no leg room or feet room...so we're riding with our knees in our chest the entire time. They also stuck 2 other small people in our seat that was only meant for 3. We said we felt bad for the 12 year old little girl sitting next to us b/c she was seriously squished up in the van...haha. We all were... Anyway, so when we got off the ferry and back on the van in Mindoro it was another 3 hour drive to Port Roxas. Along the way we dropped off our english speaking girl...not from our seat...and continued on the way, now with 14. When we arrived to Roxas we were the ones getting dropped off. The van driver unloaded our luggage, we paid him for our trip and as the van drove off we were left standing in the middle of the street like.."now what?" We found out that we had to buy tickets for the ferry from Roxas to Caticlan...but that the next ferry didn't leave until 10am. It was now 6:15 am. So we sat around until 8 or so until we found a place that would cook us some breakfast. We ate and at 9:30 boarded the ferry for a 4 hour ferry ride to Caticlan. Once at Caticlan it was only a short 30 min. jetty boat ride to Boracay! So in all it was over 24 hrs of travelling but we made it and it was defiantly an interesting experience...haha.
Rodney walking to our ferry to Caticlan...
Our Ferry...
Views from the ferry...
No comments:
Post a Comment