Camotes Island Misadventure

Where: Camotes Island, Cebu

When: Jan 6 and 7, 2007

So, I'm in Cebu for already 6 months going on 7. I came to Cebu, because I thought life's a beach literally. They said people are laid back, less stress in the workplace compared to the Makati branch of our office.

But 6 months passed by.. and the only beaches I went to were Bantayan, EGI (Mactan Area), and Hadsan. All were incomparable to Bora! (of course).

Then, the Camotes incident...

My whole team was supposed to go, but it was quite rainy the whole week, some got discouraged, I ended up with 3 girls. Sunday was sunny and perfect, but the boat leaves at 11am and is a 3 hour trip. We were in the boat 11am and then we found out it's leaving the port at 1pm. So we waited for 2 hours...slept a bit since we came from work. Then, at last it was moving, then there was a ruckus a few minutes later. They found out that the boat was sinking! So we had to dock to the nearest place. Me and my girls decided not to ride that boat anymore.

So we decided to take the Oceanjet scheduled 4PM, but an hour faster. When we were in the middle of the trip, I got seasick!

When we got to Camotes it was already dark, I thought we'd get to the beach in and go night swimming, but the ride going to the resort took almost an hour and we were too tired..

The following day.. it rained.. skies cloudy..

But still we went swimming in the rain. Found out a lot about corals and sea animals though, because of Concon (she took up BS Bio in UP).

Now to continue... we had to catch the 11am boat trip back to the city. So basically we just had like 4 hours to enjoy the beach. The beach shoreline did somehow rival that powdery sands of Bora and it stretched like about 200 meters to the beach. And even when you go further, the water won't reach waist level.

Another downer was there were a lot of corals, some sea urchins, lots of starfishes and algae on the water. But you'd enjoy them if you're snorkling (which we weren't, I forgot my googles).

So we hurried back to catch the last Oceanjet trip to Cebu (at 11am!). We were there a little bit early, rain poured. We were about a few minutes away from the dock when suddenly the "captains" of the boat decided to turn around and get the LATE passengers. They was actually one family riding 3 motorcycles, only 2 arrived, so they said they had to wait for the last one. The passengers (including us) were so impatient because we were already more than an hour behind schedule.

The mother of the wet and trembling kids, cried and wailed, and begged to the "captains" and passengers to wait for her other kid and husband and they really need to take this trip. Ad misercordiam...too much drama. Anyways the kid and husband arrived, wet and trembling also. But so finally, we were off to go.

Again, the boat ride was worse, the girls andn I got seasick.

But, the we were happy to see land again after a 4-hour roller coaster trip.

And we had to work again that night.