I had arranged a 6am pickup to go to the Underground River.
Its a 2+ hour drive, so the earlier the better.
The hotel actually only serves breakfast from 6am onwards, but they made a special provision for us to eat at 5.30am. Now that's good service....obviously all good things must come to an end...
So the van shows up to pick us up, and there are 9 burly oil rig workers inside. What? Oh, the tourguide says the van takes 12, not including the driver (so 13). I call shotgun out of desperation. Rickey and Claudia get stuffed in the back (thats what she said) with the 9 burly oil riggers and the tourguide. Anyone keeping count of the number of bodies in the van? (At this point, I think her name was cheryl)
A cramped, uncomfortable, bumpy, winding 2 hours later, we get to the town that feeds the Underground River. We pile out, stretch our legs, stretch our back, stretch our necks, stretch our legs again, only to be told that there is some festivities at the dock, and we can't go to the Underground River...YET. Its a blessing, because we get to stretch our legs again.
About an hour later (did I mention it was hot as hell with no shade?), we finally get to our boats that will take us to the island.
The island of the corny tourguides. Every boat that goes down the Underground River is accompanied by a local tour-guide. Every tour-guide has the same script memorised. Every script has jokes from 20 years ago. Every 20 year old joke is as corny as a cup of steamed corn, sitting in the corner of a corn field.
The Underground River itself is meh. Nothing spectacular, and we only got to travel about 1km in. The rest are for 'special' permits only.
So picture this. The boat is less than 1m wide, powered by the same tourguide farting into the water. One would think that Rickey and I would not sit side by side on said boat. Well, we had to. So there goes any photography. So after a hot, stuffy, gapless, hour-long cruise down a underground river, we got back out.
I also lost my helmet.
Back to the town for lunch, and I was amped up to try the 'Wood Worm'. There was a vendor selling it.
Its one of those 'I dare you to try it' tourist things. It looks gross, but did not taste horrible. I've eaten grosser.
2 hours back. Don't need to talk about it.
Since we started early and finished early, we got back to Peurto Princesa about 3. That left me time to explore the market. And look for lechon manok (I didn't find it). I did find some nice lechon kawali, so that was tea.
On the way back from the market, I decided to explore the bayfront some more. And that's where I found the fabulous food (on the left). There was a row of about 4-5 storefronts serving fresh seafood. You pick it, they grill it for you.
That was dinner.
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