“What the heck is that noise!?”
This was my first thought upon waking up in El Nido.
A particularly awkward sounding bird coupled with the air conditioning switching off (due to the power schedule: El Nido has power from 12pm-4pm and then 6pm-6am) were the culprits all of us blamed for waking us up.
It was not all annoyance however, as we soon left our rooms and decided to take a walk along the shore of the island.
We saw farms, found interesting trees, heard birds we had never heard before, and Joao interacted with children she met along the way by taking their picture and showing it to them on her half-inch screen.
We soon felt the pang of hunger, however, and decided to turn around and walk back the way we had come. As we walked along the beach, trying to decide which “beach-side bar and grill” we would try today, Joao jumped in the water and took a “quick dip”. When she emerged, she looked refreshed and energized. I was somewhat jealous, but my hunger won out against the prospect of jumping in myself and slowing everything down another few minutes, so we journeyed on.
We came across a good-looking German owned grill with chairs and tables set up right on the sand. We found a table with some shade, got our menus, and chose our meals.
I ordered some mashed potatoes with a “cheeseburger” (this ultimately ended up being two slices of homemade bread with hamburger meat and two slices of pickles, and tomatoes). Joao ordered two scrambled eggs, and Scott ordered one. As an after-thought (remembering just how long it can take to receive our food at these types of resteraunts) Joao and I each ordered a bowl of fruit salad, this was a good choice.
The real meal started when my father (Scott) asked for some “hot sauce” and we received a beautiful jar of homemade “this means business”-like hotsauce. All of us tried some, but I lathered it all over my hamburger. This made the meal both tastier, and encouraged us to drink almost two liters of water each.
After our meal, Scott and I continued lazily back to the rooms (Joao went back into the water and was swimming with some local children) and worked on blogging/structure/and marketing text for a few hours. We still had roughly two and a half hours before the electricity would return, and, by design, the internet would become active.
We tossed around ideas for the mission statement of the impending “Project Free Life”, and I hammered out yesterdays blog post. Joao went “for a walk” and took the video camera with her, saying she was going to practice shooting.
When she hadn’t returned by 11:30am we were slightly surprised, not concerned. We ventured down to the “Lollie and Abot” resteraunt and I had lunch. By the time we had finished our coffees, etc. it was well past noon. The electric had returned, and still no Joao.
We decided to go in search of an internet cafe, and leave a note for Joao in the room (hoping that she would be able to get the key from the office upon her return, and follow us to the internet cafe). A comedy of errors, is the only way to describe what next occurred. We walked through the center of town until we found an internet cafe, we inquired as to why no computers were on and were told that there was no power, all the shops had none. We were surprised, because the rooms had plenty of power.
We walked back. When we got back, we asked if there was a generator here powering the rooms some of the time. Yes, there was, and that was what was causing the confusion.
We put two and two together, and asked if there was an internet cafe in town with a backup generator. Yes! It was the “Son 1” internet cafe (we later learned this was in fact “Zone 1”). We made it there via tricycle (small peticabs with a motorcycle and a covered area for people to sit along-side) and climbed the stairs which took us to “Art Cafe”. It looked close enough to “Zone 1” and we decided to go with it.
It was as if we had stepped into some sort of pseudo-America. Floors were clean, tables were modern and well-finished, and wifi was free (with purchase of a meal). We had not anticipated this, and although we try to stay with the local flavors and experience the culture as much as possible, it was comforting to be able to experience some familiarity, not to mention wifi.
So we walked back to the room (across town once again) to get our laptops. Still no Joao and Scott had begun to worry slightly. El Nido is arguably one of the safest places to be in the Philippines, however, and the knowledge of this curbed his worrying to a manageable level.
After checking with the employees to see if they had seen her, we journeyed back to “Art Cafe”, laptops and charger cables in hand (well…in my case, in backpack).
We couldn’t quite figure out why the wifi was so slow at first. Eventually, my photo uploads stopped, and everything got faster. I resolved to put aside my photo uploading until some more critical tasks were accomplished.
Eventually, Scott received a text from Joao. All was well, she had simply stopped into a shop and gotten into a particularly good conversation. Within minutes, she was back in his sight and he relaxed.
Emails were answered, facebooks were checked, and email update invitations were sent out to those who had shown interest in receiving them. A few hours into our session, a friendly young-looking Australian named “Carl” walked in and sat down at my (Christian) table. He introduced himself and we proceeded to have a great conversation about many things (including rock climbing, sleeping outside, swimming with whalesharks, and rudeness of tourists) I was glad to be able to connect with someone who had similar interests.
Eventually, he left, bidding me a farewell. It was getting darker outside and we were almost done with our tasks. We all saved some reading material for reading “offline” (longer emails, blog posts, etc) and went back to the room.
We were in for the night, and, save for a few short walks through the town and a brief lay-down in the hammock outside for Christian, this was how it stayed.
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