Travel between Islands

It is Thursday morning already here in the Philippines. I find it difficult to believe that a week has already gone by since I left home. It is so strange how a week can go so quickly when each day seems to stretch endlessly ahead of you. It feels so peaceful here that you can’t think to have more pressing matters than being mesmerized by the ebb and flow of the ocean. Each hour stretches luxurious in front of us. Meals are a leisurely affair as well. It can take 45min or sometimes an hour for your food to arrive to you but you find that you just really don’t mind.
Saturday we left Manila by bus bound for Batangas , a three hour drive. Not because it is that far but because traffic is that bad. Add 10 times as many cars as we have on the road in the treasure valley, then take away half of the traffic laws and that may come close to the craziness of Manila traffic. It is a throng of vehicles of every shape and size from the little tricie (a small motorcycle with a side care for caring passengers, sometimes whole families or as we found out 5 Caucasian women) to the bigger Jeepnes or passenger busses and everything in between. Each one weaving in and out of the other traffic in 4 lanes vehicles on a 2 lane highway. It is an intricate dance incomprehensible to the western mind. A nightmare of gridlock, yet beautiful. It is a dance that the Philippinos somehow know and understand well.
In Batangas we made our way to the pier, bought our tickets and awaited a boat to take us to our temporary home at Tamaraw beach resort. The boat is a long boat tipped up on either end similar to the shape of a banana with a canopy over the top to keep the worst of the sun off of its passengers. There was a heavy breeze blowing so the water was choppy and somewhat uncomfortable to ride. My mind kept coming back to the story that Vicki had told our class when we were still back in Boise about nearly drowning on a similar crossing when the waves got so bad that the boat she was on broke apart.
Thankfully we did arrive in Puerto Galara safely and a hotel shuttle picked us and drove us the 10 min drive to Tamaraw. Tamaraw is not the fanciest resort on the beach but it is clean, peaceful and the food is decent.