Calicoan Island

Maupay nga kulop!

Tuesday marked the end of the Islamic festival Ramadam which meant that it was a national holiday here. I found this rather strange considering I've yet to meet a Muslim person in the Philippines and that the country at large is Catholic. Either way, it provided a pretty good excuse for a bunch of us to visit another beautiful island in the Philippines.

This time we chose Calicoan Island, located at the South Eastern tip of Samar. The group pretty much consisted of every volunteer including myself, Hazel, James, Alana, Ilonka, Ingrid, Connie, Victoria and Benedikta - a rather female-heavy group to say the least.

We left Monday, immediately after finishing our placements and took a Jeepney downtown to Tacloban. Here we jumped in a minivan and headed to Guiuan, the Southern most town of Eastern Samar. The journey was 3-hours long and once again saw us crammed pretty tight. On arrival in Guiuan, we found some pedicabs to drive us the 23km across to Calicoan Island and the resorts which we had booked to stay at.

About 15km in, the pedicab which myself, Hazel and James were riding in found itself with a flat tyre. The driver had no way of changing it and no phone to contact anyone - these kinds of scenarios no longer surprise me here! I pulled out my phone to try and call one of the other girls, to see if they could come back for us but had no service. So we waited around for a while and watched our driver hail down another pedicab in order to get hold of a spare tyre. Later on, the other two pedicabs came back for us.

By 6pm we arrived at our resorts. Despite the terrential rain and lack of sunlight by this time, I knew we were in paradise. Calicoan Island is rather remote and as a result, there's only two places to stay. The six girls had booked a room at the more luxurious surf camp, while James, Hazel and myself had gone for the budget option of surf huts at the Calicoan Villa. The surf huts were fairly basic but we were only staying one night.

We met up with the other girls to have dinner and a few drinks and spent the remainder of the evening chatting, enjoying the view of the coast and listening to locals sing karaoke. When we returned to our room, Hazel and I found that someone had left a present on our pillows. Sadly, it was not a single-wrapped chocolate mint as would perhaps be expected but instead a whole load of rat poo! Hazel went to reception to see if it was possible to move to one of the fancy rooms in the villa and somehow managed to get us upgraded completely free of charge. Not too bad considering these rooms were usually three times as expensive as the surf huts.

The next morning, we all rose early and had breakfast. My first stop was the beach. I rented a board and swam out to the waves to find it more of a struggle than I had anticipated. The tide was strong, the waves were rough and big and the ocean bed was completely filled with sharp rocks. None the less, I gave it a go for a while, especially since I haven't had the chance to surf for a couple of years. I came out of the ocean feeling completely exhausted yet still pretty satisfied at having caught some waves - but when you're the only person out in the ocean, you should probably question whether it's a smart idea.

The rest of the afternoon was then spent relaxing at the Surf Camp's beautiful swimming pool located right on the edge of the coast line. I don't think I've ever experienced anything more picturesque. We later ate lunch and swam a bit more before heading back to Guiuan to catch the van back to Tacloban. We somehow managed to negotiate a private van to take just the nine of us back to our homestays in Bliss. Rather than costing £2 each, we paid £3. Not too terrible for the luxury of being able to feel your bum cheeks for 3 hours.

All in all, a very enjoyable end to Ramadam for us all.

Much love!

Sam