Returns

Before we knew it we were back in Manila, our home away from home. As I checked emails and updated family of our ongoings, I kept noticing my return flight confirmation sitting in my inbox. The end of the trip was drawing close. With only 5 days remaining, we set about reflecting on our trip thus far. Had we accomplished our goals? Had we seen everything we wanted?

One thing we had discussed early on involved traveling to Donsol to swim with 40ft whale sharks as they passed by in their annual migration. Calling up a reference in Donsol, I was told the sightings had not been very frequent as of yet, a little too early in the year.

So Maggie and I set our sights back to Palawan, eager to spend our remaining days near the coast.

This time we flew into Puerto Princesa, further southwest from Coron. Picking a hotel from our guidebook as our plane touched down, we headed into a much larger city than we were expecting. We dropped our things, rented a motorbike and set off in hopes of finding a half-day on a beach.

Driving up the coast we came to Honda Bay, a small village on the coast that provided a jump-off point for island hopping excursions. As we tried to arrange a boat, we were told the last one had just departed, not 10 minutes earlier. Were there any beaches we could walk to instead? Sorry sir. With island beaches in view across the turquoise water, we looked out from our late afternoon purgatory with a hint of frustration. 

But there was time in the day yet. We hopped on the bike and headed further North along the coast. Coming to Vietville, a small Vietnamese refugee town, we hopped off and walked around. The small town had been built to host temporary refugees from Vietnam. When the danger had passed and the time came for the refugees to leave, many did not want to return to their home country. The filipino church stepped in and provided sanctuary to these refugees and offered them the land, homes, and electricity, as long as the refugees covered the cost of their children's education. The filipino people had felt that these Vietnamese folks were part of their culture. 

In this small town, we crossed a small bridge and found our way over to a small Buddhist shrine. This was the first real establishment of non-catholic worship we had seen in our time in the country. Walking around the small building built around the Buddha statue, it felt as if we had crossed the South China Sea to mainland Asia.

The next day we hopped on an early bus to Sabang, a few hours up the coast. Sabang is the jump-off point to see the Underground River, a long river extending deep into caves along the coast. It was recently named as one of the New Seven Natural Wonder of the World. Which is to say, it has been entirely taken over by the tourist trade, something we only found out after waiting for 3 hours to tour only the smallest portion of this "wonder". Forced into crowded small boats, and wearing the most stylish of fluorescent orange life-vests, and plastic hardhats, we floated briefly through a few caverns, as the tour-guide paddled and talked us through our experience. It's safe to say the whole thing felt pretty cookie cutter to me.

Returning to town, and feeling as if we had not quite accomplished what we had set out to, we got two tickets for the 800meter zip-line that crossed over the cove nearby.

Leaning back into the harness, two men threw us out into the air. As we zipped from one side of the cove to the other, large waves crashed below our feet.

Feeling like we had redeemed our sense of adventure, we started hiking back to our hotel along the coast. Opting for the more adventurous route we scaled over ocean side rocks as large waves slammed against the shore right below us. A fall here would put us in a washing machine lined with jagged spires. As we concentrated on avoiding the pitfalls to our side, it must have "slipped" Maggie's mind to pay attention to the pitfalls right in front of her. As I was hiking behind her, suddenly I watched her drop out of view, falling about 6 feet through open air and landing on her knee on rocks below. Accompanied by a loud crack, I feared the worst.

Another set of massive waves pounded against the rocks, this time spraying us in the moment of unnerving silence that followed her plummet.

I jumped down, find her is a state of disbelief, turned her over, and revealed a bloody leg and knee. With a series of decent scrapes on her shin that seemed topical, I immediately looked more closely at her knee, which appeared to be a deep cut, packed with mud, blood, and what I hoped was not fragments of bone.

A wave crashed even closer as she caught her breath and I wrapped my shirt around her knee, applying pressure to the wound.

We were totally out of view of anybody, on slippery rocks, and the waves seemed to be coming closer. Could she walk? Did she break something? And then it started to rain.

Situating her in a safer spot, I scoped out the possibilities for getting us off of these damned rocks. The path ahead looked even rougher than what we had passed; going back was the only way.

Maggie attempted to stand on her leg and found that she could support herself on it. A good sign. So we slowly scrambled our way back towards shore, where I piggy-backed her to the closest local's establishment, a small shack that was selling drinks. Getting her a bottle of water and a coke, I started asking to borrow a motorbike to get her to the nearest clinic. With little luck, I ran over to the next place, and asked the same. Eventually I found a boy who had a bike. Moments later he pulled up on an old smoking motorcycle. Maggie hopped on, the bike stalled, and he could not get it started again.

Giving up, the boy ran off into the jungle. Minutes later he returned, pushing a second motorbike. This one was apparently out of gas. He took off once more into the jungle, and returned this time with a can of gas. Filling up the tank, he started up the bike. Maggie got on the back, and they zipped off down the road to the clinic.

I hopped on the back of the first bike with a second boy after he managed to get it started, and we followed to the clinic.

At the clinic, they cleaned her wound, and got her information. The women were very professional and comforting as they explained that we would have to take the ambulance back to Puerto Princesa where x-rays could be performed at the larger hospital. The knee might have been fractured in the fall. Running back to the hotel to gather our belongings as they splinted Maggie's leg, I was greeted by the owner of the hotel.

"Is she alright?"she asked.

"What?"

"Your girlfriend."

"How did you..."

"My brother told me she has fallen."

"Yes, she'll be OK, but we need to leave for the hospital in Princesa."

The woman checked me out, giving us a discount off the cost of the room out of sympathy for our accident. I couldn't believe how fast the news had traveled through town. It had only been moments since getting her to the clinic, and everyone had already been informed.

I grabbed our things, tossed them in the ambulance, and off we went.

The 90 minute ambulance ride wove through valleys, past farms, and villages. As we neared Puerto Princesa, traffic picked up heavily. Coming to a crawl, our ambulance driver swerved into the left lane. Oncoming trucks swerved off the road just in time to allow our driver to avoid using the brakes. Tricycles, cars, pedestrians and buses all swerved to let us through as we pushed our way through the thick of it. I couldn't help but feel like the driver was living out his fantasy. In a country where the disorder of driving is hard to tolerate, he was cutting right through.

Maggie and I were all smiles at this point.

Pulling into the hospital, Maggie was treated, x-rayed and checked. No breaks! No fractures! And as the ambulance driver came to collect his bill, I was told he only wanted enough money to cover the cost of the gas it took to drive us. Incredible. With no health insurance involved, the entire emergency excursion, including an ambulance ride, medication, multiple x-rays, and heading to the ER cost just about $120. Maggie had been well taken care of, in good facility, with the care of good doctors and nurses, and the price was basically the cost of the materials that were used in the process. It was a telling experience, to see the alternative to our own domestic system, which seems so comparatively out of control.

Back in a hotel near the airport, we sat back, incredibly thankful the accident had not been more serious, and thankful the medical workers had been so helpful.

We returned to Manila a bit beat up but in good spirits. As we tied up loose ends and said our goodbyes to our incredible hosts and the friends we had made throughout our time in the Philippines, our minds wandered, over mountains, past reefs, through the surf, and beyond the archipelago, East to New York.