Bicol, Philippines

Way overloading with pictures again, but I guess that's better than overloading with words!  We've "used up" our three weeks in the Philippines and feel like we've hardly scratched the surface.  But now it's time to move on to Korea, so we're sitting in the Manila airport (for the fifth time) waiting for our flight.  Manila airport is one of the few we've found with free wi-fi so we're thankful that we can use these waits to catch up.

We spent about a week in Bicol (an island? a province? an area? Not sure how it all works here), half of it visiting a coconut oil factory and half of it relaxing.

This is the factory building.  Dignity is set up as a for profit coconut oil producer, but in a rural community to provide jobs and community development.  Mike went to observe and offer his engineering support.

Looking snazzy as we prepare to tour the facility (oh the power of the blog poster--I can choose which pictures I appear in!).  At right is the plant manager, Shirley.  She worked very hard to make our visit a good one.

We stayed in Dignity's very cute guesthouse right across the street.

Exercising to Spanish instructions--PE and Foreign Language done in one shot!

We flew into Legazpi and made a quick stop to view Mt. Mayon, a very active volcano, before beginning our drive to Dignity.  This is what remains of a cathedral that was buried during an 1814 eruption.

While at Dignity, the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight took place.  Manny is the Filipino hero so it was fun to watch part of it at the store/house next door.

On Sunday afternoon, our friends asked a local fisherman to take us out to a couple of islands.

Mark, one of the guys who went with us, was amazing at spotting all kinds of creatures, including this sea slug.

And this "thing"--some kind of snail, I think

Back at the house, the women were working together to prepare a sticky rice treat for one of the women to sell the following day.  She cooks rice in coconut milk, wraps it in a woven leaf, and then steams it.  They sell for 5 pesos (about 8 cents) each.

Then they had some fun with the extra leaves and started decorating Trina.

We were only in Cagmanaba, by Dignity, for about three days and then it was time to move again.  We traveled to the Caramoan Peninsula on the east side of the island.  Some of you Survivor followers (Hello, Crystal?) may be interested to know that a number of international Survivor seasons were filmed there and word on the street is the US version was going to begin filming there this week.

Our hotel rounded up a tricycle driver to take us to some sights, one of which was a cave.  We're still not sure it was the cave he intended, but what an experience.  Some guys on the side of the road walked us back into their village and from there through the rice fields and into the trees.  We knew it would either be a unique experience or we would die at their hands.  I guess by now you know which it was.

Once again, the power of the blog poster.  I chose to leave out the picture where I'm very unattractively crawling on my belly to squeeze myself under about an 18 inch opening.  Definitely more of a workout than I was expecting.

Caramoan town was also celebrating a fiesta while we were there, so we took in some of the events.

First up:  the cockfights.  Yes, very politically incorrect, but we were curious to see what they're all about.  Less gory than I expected, but watching once was enough for all of us.  The only white people, nearly the only females, and definitely the only children.  Bad Parenting 101.

Then it was right on to the Miss/Mrs. Caramoan contest.

Most of our time on the peninsula was spent island hopping.  We did one day to the further away islands and another day to those just offshore.

On one island, you could climb over this steep rock to a lagoon.  I chose to be the photographer on the ground instead.

We found a few of these cool starfish.

One of our stops was at these floating huts where we found lots of sand dollars and had our lunch...

...and bought fresh buko (coconut) juice from the buko man

Saw tons of these jellyfish which

were safe to hold.  Celia and Trina found out the snorkel made a great waterslide for the littlest ones.

 

A blue starfish.  One of my favorite discoveries on this trip has been the huge variety of underwater life God has made!

For dinner we explored some of the street food.  The girls and I played it safe with barbecued chicken and pork skewers but Mike branched out to the chicken intestines and chicken blood cube.