It may look beautiful and all the same it was but this welcome sight came after the worst journey of both mine and Emma's lives. It may sound dramatic but I cannot even begin to put into adequate words just how arduous this journey really was. The day before I casually booked the boat in Coron town with my new friend Rosie. When presented with a placard with a choice of boats at the same price we naturally pointed out the prettiest, most low lying, traditional Asian style boat we seen. Wrong choice! What I didn't do that day was actually look at the distance between Coron and Mindoro, a lengthy stretch of completely unsheltered sea with the next piece of easterly land being the land mass of Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, a long way for waves to build with a prevailing westerly wind and those waves certainly built before crashing into the side of our tiny boat in the middle of the stretch reaching an easy 10ft. It all started pretty calm out of port but as we reached the beginning of the stretch Emma began to be sick, this big wave bashing continued as did Emma's vomiting even after we moved from the top of the boat to the unrailed back of the boat and staff quarters where the toilet was.
Looking out of the back of the boat as I clutched onto the only thing that was nailed down, a rickety table in the middle and watching as the horizon repeatedly disappeared again and again all the time thinking of my own impending death while I was wearing no life jacket was not fun, far from it!
The above is an inaccurate artists impression.
We were more than elated to reach land and although we had just caught the last of the light we decided to stay the night in Mindoro town before making the trip by what we imagined to be a spacious air conditioned bus the next day. After a search for accommodation and being presented with what I can only describes as a prison as a possible option I cracked and decided then I didn't care what price we paid but we would be taking the next "hotel, hostel, house or fucking hovel" as long as it was safe for a sleep. We did that at the Blue Harbour Inn and in reflection it was actually pretty sweet.
The next day our bus dream quickly vanished as we were crammed into a small mini van that was made to hold 10 but ended up in the carpet with -5 passengers. Something I could deal with right up until the men stopped another few times on the outside of town and crammed yet more unfortunate people until the amount of people number an incredible 23. That journey took a change to another stuffed minivan, a tuk tuk through the mountains, a boat ride and a bit of a trek to where we had been tipped off to stay in a place called Big La Laguna but after all that I was happy to be told of and shown a room on a beach side resort that was heaven compared to the previous 2 days. It was a little too expensive for us but hey it had a kitchen, air con a and even a TV.
Turns out I needed the TV as I had eaten some questionable noodles for dinner in Mindoro town and although I questioned the 'bits' to be meat but decided that they must be onion I soon discovered to incredible sickness that meaty they were and being vegetarian meaty was the most probable cause of 3 entire days being taken away from my backpacking plans. I spent my time in that beautiful beach resort in bed but it was good to relax all the same and to plan our next trip up North to Luzon and Segata!
