1 April 2016 | Part 2
We had an uneventful bus ride from Manila and arrived in Paracale at 4 AM. The driver didn’t announce the drop-off, like they usually do, and if I didn’t wake up on time we would have totally missed the stop.
Travel time: 8 hours and 15 minutes.
FROM JUNCTION TO PORT
We took a trike from the junction to the port and paid 20 PHP each (it’s 10 PHP during the day). We would have walked if we knew the way for it was only a short distance.
We were too early and the boats were still sleeping so we stayed in one of the open sidewalk restaurants to wait for sunrise.
At sunrise, we walked to the port of Waling-Waling EcoVillage. We were scheduled to leave at 8 AM but we had to wait for a big group that arrived almost an hour late, loud and unapologetic.
I was a bit irritated at this point in time because I didn’t sleep the whole night and it was sweltering hot. But I kept my cool, I had to live by example, my sister was watching me.
The group filled up one large boat…
We had the smaller one. Thank God or I would have died of their noise.
Our boat man took care of our stuff, nothing got wet.
Before getting to the vast sea, we had to pass through the seaside community of makeshift houses and floating garbage. The view was heartbreaking, it honestly made me want to do community service 😦
But this trip wasn’t about me. It was about my younger sister. So off to the sea!
I was so sleepy, I couldn’t remember how many times I dozed off despite the deafening engine.
The first sight of white sand was so beautiful. I thought that was our island but it wasn’t.
I saw another scenic beach but we passed that too.
We kept on passing amazing white beaches and this sustained my excitement for our final destination.
VIOLETOLOGY 
Weird. In my experience, when you ride up north, bus conductors remember the destinations of the tickets they issue and if they don’t shout out the destination, they wake you up to tell you your stop is near. Problema kaya nila kung lumagpas ka.
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True, they usually do that, shout out the stops. I was expecting the trip to be 10 hours, so I wasn’t ready to go down yet. But my instinct was telling me otherwise, so I walked the aisle to the driver and asked him, they were about to close the doors… and yes, it was our stop. Haha, buti nalang!
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