The end of the Sabang Beach adventure

When Martin took off, he had left me a gift – I had gotten a cold/small flu. I ended up sleeping for 36 hours straight, only interrupted by one meal and a bathroom visit. Fever and a sore throat, really needed to get rid of that before continuing. That didn’t mean I could not be in the bar, because I had to be somewhere, right? I was sitting there looking for local medicine on the Internet, when Claire comes over to check on me, since I had not been visible for 2 days.
She told me to ask for a hot Calamansi drink, which is basically half hot water, half fresh squeezed Calamansi juice. For 2 straight days I drank that thing, I am pretty sure my teeth got a little corroded from all that acid, but it really worked. I felt so much better, in fact I ordered a beer to celebrate I was back on track.

In the evening I went out with Jenny and her girlfriend, somehow we ended up in one of the discos with dancing girls, what was all that about now. Well, we had a few drinks there and talked a little about life in general. It is often difficult to understand why an entire population has to suffer in so many ways because a few people have made wrong decisions on behalf of an entire country. One thing is that grownups can make their own decisions, but it is really depressing to know that most of the children we have seen on this trip grow up to a very questionable future, where they won’t have access to education and healthcare. Seem like keeping people uneducated, will keep a smaller group of people very rich.

I also made it all the way to the Pirate Bar one evening, had to pass a test because of Martin and mine 100^th dive. I wasn’t feeling super that night, so promised to come back before I left to do it. Promise!

Instead we played a little pool and after a couple of fun games with Claire, she suddenly changed the rule that the looser should go under the table. Well, luckily for her, she lost the first game and so had to check if there was any dust under the pool table, haha. Ok, I was under there next, I guess I can’t deny that.
 Then I played a game with Ceci, she changed the rules a little bit, you had to go under the table the number of times that was on your highest ball at the end of the game. I was a little doubtful about that rule, but everyone in the bar agreed, that the playing the game with that rule was legit and done all the time. Ok, then. I missed a solid ball, which Ceci pocketed safely, she smiled and continued playing. Soon after I realized that the lowest of my balls had a 9 on it. Holy cow, then I just couldn’t lose, no way.

It had been a close game, but at the end of it I was on floor crawling under the table 13 times. When I was done all the people in the bar started laughing, turned out she had just made up that rule and I had fallen for it, haha. Later I also got hustled for some money in a game against Claire. This is a Pirate’s bar alright.

The last night I was there it started raining a little bit, and I was reading on the Philippine weather forecast that there was a typhoon over the Eastern part of the country, a place we had talked about going to in the first place. Lucky we didn’t go there as we would be in the middle of the typhoon’s path. During the night there was a lot of wind and rain, thunder and lighting, and when I woke up next morning, a tree in the resort had broken and landed on top of the room that Martin had stayed in a few days earlier. The heavy tree trunk had bashed in the roof pretty badly, that probably could not be fixed with some paint. Imagine Martin had been there when it happened, he would have crapped his pants full, haha

I go to the restaurant for some breakfast, it is raining hard and quite a lot of wind. I see the whole beach is gone, and waves are hitting the front of the hotel walls. This is no normal rain I thought, and right then Naven stops by and tells me that the ferries are not operating today, as Batangas had issued a #2 warning, which means no ferries carrying passengers can use the harbor.

During the night, the typhoon had picked up speed, changed a little direction and had passed right over the island I was staying at. It had been pretty bad on the South side of the island, this was the North side, so it turned out that I was actually stuck on the island indefinitely as long as the typhoon was causing this kind of weather in the area.

The rain and wind had been devastating, homes had been washed away and several people had died. Looking out on the ocean, I could see why, the visibility was crap, you could see maybe 100 meters. The waves were high and those boats that had not been moved to calmer waters, were taking some good bashing now and it was too late to move them. Even though there were some people trying to swim out to the boats to move them, it looked like suicide, but imagine that boat is the only thing in their life they have to make an income, there is almost no choice.

I was sitting in the restaurant sorting pictures and writing a little bit, sucking on my hot Calamansi to stay warm. A couple of the girls, including Jenny didn’t show up to work that day, so many people were worried if they were alright as they all stayed up in the hills in another small village where they would be sure to have more wind and even worse weather. One guy coming from the village said there were a lot of fallen trees blocking the roads and that the power was out.

Well, life doesn't stand still here just because of a little bit of wind and rain. In the morning some guy was taking his first lesson to become a scuba diver, with the wind howling and the rain gushing down, I guess if you learn to scuba dive in a typhoon, the rest is easy, haha

I was supposed to meet with some other guys in Batangas, but had to send them an email early in the morning that I would be delayed until, well, I didn’t really know. Nothing much happened that day, was just sitting waiting for news from the pier in Batangas if they would lift the #2 warning they had issued. That didn’t happen, so I got another night in Sabang, but it was used for waiting only. My phone had gone belly up, so I didn't have an alarm clock anymore, which meant I couldn't really go to sleep at normal hours. Instead I went to sleep at 8 at night and so woke up pretty early in the morning.

I met Naven around 6.30 and he gave me thumbs up, the ferries are running again he said. Good. I went to the pier to get my ferry ticket, came back to the hotel to pack my stuff and I was set to go. Then it was time to go around the resort to say goodbye to all the friends and people that had made this yet another unforgettable stay somewhere new in the world. We will the dive shop guys, they saved our dive experience for sure, the crazy Claire with the rolling Rrrrs, the other funny and crazy girl dancing the Gangnam style if not to the radio in the bars then through her phone, Ceci in the Pirate bar and of course Jenny - and then all the other people too.
See you soon again Sir Danny was the last thing I heard on the way out. Goodbye Sabang Beach.