The journey home – Richard
The day started at normal with me walking up stupidly early though by 05.35 I had had enough, kettle on, drinks made, let the day begin!
It has to be said that Jo did not quite see things the same way that I did with cries of ‘but we don’t need an earlier breakfast today’ and similar.
After boiling the kettle and opening a few blinds, Jo gave in and joined in the fun!
We completed documenting the dive logs and it seems that we clocked up 4821 minutes underwater, that’s over 80 hours submerged!
For me, the last breakfast was a little fruit and two eggs over-easy. It was corned beef hash day today and I generally give that a wide berth and today was no exception!
After breakfast we break down the camera gear and let it dry a bit more, we go to the room and throw most of what we can find into the bags then it’s back to the camera room to pack all that sruff into its case and then the dive gear into another case and we are pretty much done.
We’ve confirmed departure time of 2.30pm, so we change for pool play and spend the next couple of hours bobbing about in the bright sunshine, I’m confident I’ve over done it, time will tell.
Back to the room for coffee on the balcony whilst we contemplate the next big event – lunch!
.. And lovely it was too!
Now just under two hours before we depart BAR, most likely dozing on the balcony, i think we are all pooled out and I certainly don’t need any more sunshine!
Ok, scratch that, back in the pool we go for another pleasant hour of bobbing around aimlessly whilst avoiding the sunshine????????????
Fortunately some other guests joined us in the pool and we were able to check the time, 20 minutes until our bags were being collected, better get out quick!!
We settled our F&B tab and said our goodbyes.
Our boat picked us up right on time for the short trip around the corner to Secret Bay where Walter is waiting for us in a shiney new Toyota van which has most excellent air-con thank goodness!
Now on our way, it takes a while to wind our way along the coast road up to Mabini and then a little while more to get to Batangas. After that we join the main road to Manila which was flowing well for a while, now, not so much, currently feeling good that we left a little earlier than planned!
There is no obvious reason for the hold up, I guess it’s done way ahead. I’ll report back in a while!
… It seems that a lorry load of eggs had overturned, I guess the driver over-egged it! Ok, that’s en-oeuf!
After that it’s a clear and swift run to the airport, painless check-in and swanky new passport control with scanners (my passport failed so had to go old school and get it stamped!).
After Jo is relieved of the tiny bottle of water that she inadvertently tried to sneak through, we are in departures with barely 2hrs to spare!
After reviewing the available dining establishments and options, we decided to go for a couple of packs of coconut macaroons, yum!