Chris awoke shortly after, and we decided to leave Amy and Misha sleeping. Chris, Kristen, and I walked in to town to visit the palangke (market). It was nice to get a day time view of where we were staying. Chris started chatting with a lady and her daughter as we walked and found out that the fruit market would be held tomorrow. Unfortunately, that was when we were off to our next destination.
Chris was able to add more minutes to his cell phone. It is crazy how they do it here; you reload from someone else's phone though I think they have to be authorized. We wandered around the palangke. The meat and fish area was hopping with activity but so stinky. Kristen was lucky enough to see a pig's head being cut up. Yum. We found some crystallized sugar for breakfast but were not up early enough to get the fresh-from-the-oven pandesol--a sweet roll. I never got a chance to have any fresh from the oven, so I couldn't comment on how much better they might have been, but they were good.
We experienced our first trike ride. Amy and Misha were sorry that they missed it. However, they were awake and up by the time we returned home and wishing they could have come with us.
Analyn, the caretaker, called for two trikes to come for us at 9 am to take us to Pundaquit Beach where we would then take a boat to Anawangin Cove. We packed up Analyn's leftovers for lunch. Kind of a funny aside, when we returned from the market, we were talking to Analyn and her husband and wondered if they had any foil or plastic wrap of any sort that we could take the leftovers with us. We floundered a bit in trying to convey our meaning. Analyn surprised us with, "Do you want tupperware?" We were totally not expecting that but yes. Yes, we did. We were set with lunch, snacks from our grocery excursion on Wednesday, water, gatorade, and sunscreen. We piled in to the two trikes and were off on a 30-minute ride to the boat launch at Pundaquit.
Even before we had completely extricated ourselves from the trikes at Pundaquit, boat owners were clamoring, "You need boat?" We did, and Chris immediately began bargaining for a price. We climbed a wooden ladder into the Kenneth Jon and set off on another 30-minute ride to Anawangin Cove. The beach was pretty empty which we were quite okay with. Apparently the area fills up on the weekends, but we had it mostly to ourselves for the day. So, we spent most of the day swimming in the South China Sea. How cool was that?
We had to pay an entrance fee to swim at the beach and also to rent a kubo (bamboo shelter with a table and benches) where we could leave our stuff in relative shade. We sprayed and slathered on sunscreen and set off for the beach.
Misha was quick to try on one of the two sets of scuba gear we brought along with us. She immediately got the hang of it. Amy wanted to try as well but found that putting her head underwater gave her a huge headache. I think she was suffering from allergies as well as a plugged ear from when we landed. Chris took off exploring with his scuba gear, and though Misha tried to follow she never quite caught up to him. As Amy, Kristen, and I were leaving the beach to get a snack, I caught Misha's attention and told her we were leaving the beach. I didn't want to leave her unsupervised. She decided to come get a snack as well. Chris joined us after awhile.
We slathered on more sunscreen again. Misha and Chris headed out for more snorkeling, while Amy, Kristen, and I searched for shells. The shells were small but smooth and polished. Kristen had forgotten to put on her swim shirt before leaving the house earlier that morning. I tried to keep sunscreen on her, but I could tell she was beginning to get red. We swam a little more and then raced back across the hot sand to our kubo hut for lunch.
On the other side of the beach was a small pond and a camping area. The water was totally warm and the girls tried to catch the itty bitty fish swimming around. We explored the camp ground area and then returned for the beach for more swimming. The Filipino people are a friendly bunch. We talked with a family for some time after returning to the beach. The consensus among most people once they found out that we had three girls was that we needed a boy. We heard that a number of times.
The Kenneth Jon nosed in to the cove around 2:30. Since we had told them 3 pm, we made full use of our time. The waves breaking on the beach were a lot choppier; we wished we had some sort of boogie board to take full advantage of them.
By the time Chris was finally in range to use his cell phone to have Analyn call for our trike drivers to pick us up, we were fairly close to Pundaquit Beach again. We found some shade and waited. I noticed that Amy had done quite a sucky job spraying my legs with sunscreen. I had some crazy-shaped spots that were bright red. While waiting, Chris coached the girls on what to say to buy some soda. He first sent them off to find out how much it would cost. They came back with an answer and he gave them coins. They were given soda in a plastic, ziploc-type bag with a straw sticking out. That is the normal mode of operation since the vendors want to be able to get the deposit back on their glass soda bottles.
We returned to our "house", and I got started on laundry. Lucky me. But it would be nice to have some clean clothes. We packed light knowing that we would have laundry facilities here. Kristen headed outside to make a new friend with Analyn's daughter, Hannah. She took her composition book and a pen and the two girls sat and drew for quite sometime under a tree. They came to the house for awhile as well where Kristen and she watched a movie on Kristen's iPod. They could have watched something on the tv, but they opted for the small electronic.
Chris had asked Analyn if she would make dinner for us again and requested Pansit. We still had plenty of rice from the night before, but Analyn was quick to make sure. I finished all but one load of wet laundry but figured I could stick it in the dryer in the morning. We were all pooped, a little bit red, and fast asleep by 8:30 pm.