Riders on the Storm

I’m in Camarines Sur with the family, supposedly to go wakeboarding again. But no, we got immensely tired from that grueling 15-hour roadtrip from Manila to Donsol to catch a glimpse of the elusive butanding.

No, not even after three hours of boat ride did we get to see any whalesharks, much to everybody’s dire disappointment. It did not help that our Donsol lunch in an adjacent “resto” had carinderia-style food (e.g. salty laing, binagoongang taba, boiled fish cutlets with gabi–hey my description makes the food sound good but really, it’s just lamang tiyan!) in miniscule servings amounting to Php100 each, and their equally, good-for-a-dwarf cup of rice at Php25. After an estimated 16 cups of rice, 8 tasas of viand and one 8 oz. Coke, we were billed almost Php1,700. In Manila, or probably in another place not Donsol, the food we ate would only amount Php500. As another point of comparison, our yesterday’s Jollibee mid-afternoon snack of collective burger steak meals and tuna pies for 10 people (I had meatless palabok, strawberry frost and tuna pie, by the way), costed less than a thousand pesos. Imagine, the nerve.

Maybe we’ll get lucky in Donsol some other time perhaps. Maybe if it weren’t festival season and if people weren’t as cunning.

So after which, we headed to CWC (which was about another three hours away from Donsol) for some real water action. That 21-hour trip was just taxing, so eventually we all holed into our separate, comfy rooms in The Mansion Suites for some zzz’s. Such a lovely place, The Mansion Suites! We have this big TV, a veranda, an interesting Capiz lamp, self-heating water Thermos–basically all conveniences necessary in a good hotel–all packaged in a nice, medium-sized, ecru-and-dark-brown minimalistic room.

I love the food here in CWC. There’s a lot to choose from in their schizo-menu: pasta, pizza, American breakfasts, Pinoy classics, dessert, beer, etc. at a very reasonable price. By reasonable, I mean Aglio Olio pasta in a spruced presentation at Php120, not barely edible gabi leaves in a tiny platter.

And the best thing is–there’s wi-fi ferchrissakes! Muy delisioso! Mackenzie my Macintosh is a happy laptop; finally of some use in this trip aside from being a cumbersome itunes Hence, my first-ever delayed techie post.

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Blogging, for me, usually meant posting via the house or the office, but not during trips and vacations. I once believed (or would like to believe to have believed, haha) that computer use should be restricted to the home and/or office, and should not be integrated in any way with vacations. For someone who sits in front of the monitor for at least 8 hours every weekday, taking a break from work must mean detaching from all things related to work. I wouldn’t want to believe that now. It’s fun to blog, especially when you’re in some secluded place with surprising conveniences.

It’s probably raining outside now, and maybe tomorrow it will be overcast. But no matter: I’m loving this whole scenario. CWC always makes my Bicol experiences the best, no kidding!

Later I shall update this post with visual company. For the meantime, I shall take my, ahem, beauty and energy sleep so I may have the vigor to balance the board tomorrow and get stoked big time.