adventure in detail

was in Sablayan for a meeting/presentation for about two and a half hours. took us a day a night and several river crossings to get there.

van to Batangas port (batangas port is so developed now! i had no idea). RORO to Abra, Occidental Mindoro. van gets off, and away we go on a bumpy it's-barely-morning ride. plan was, drive all the way down to Sablayan. problem, people at the meeting forgot to tell us that a bridge (one of the twenty million bridges we had to cross) is broken. can you believe it? we were like, hindi nga?!? it's been down for three weeks and it'll take quite some time to fix it. only thing to do is to leave the van there, cross the bridge, and take one of the buses on the otherside! one long bus ride (potholes along the road were almost as big as the bus itself!) and a trike later, we were finally at the meeting. about 3 hours late!! and when we get there, everyone is saying you didn't know the bridge was out? sus. how? how would we have known?

meeting went well. i'll tell you about THAT some other time.

ended up sleeping in one of the towns there. in general, the way back was less eventful. took a supercat to make up for lost time. fast things. love them. get to the port. take one of those illegal colorum vans to manila. a kilometer away from where we're supposed to get off, it promptly breaks down. NOTHING surprises me about that. after a bridge collapse? that's nothing!

through all of this adventure, i have formed an admiration for our driver. who is the most patient, resourceful person i know. bilib. he was still smiling and helpful despite driving up and down luzon and mindoro non-stop for the greater part of 3 days. we said, we have to leave you here at the bridge. (imagine, middle of nowhere, no signal, nothing). he was like, ok, hintay lang ako dito. simple. he didn't know when we'd be back! and we had no way of telling him. he still offered us ice cream during dinner! we had to leave him (again) at abra port when we had to take the supercat ahead of him. he was still, ok! smiling. iba yung bait nito. kung ako yan, galit na ako. you're leaving me behind AGAIN???

pero saludo ako sa taong yun. amazing. and i consider myself more patient than most. but nowhere in the vicinity of his level of patience. he made the experience an adventure instead of a nightmare. he's the type of person you want around in a crisis. mang quintin, salamat po.