North to Tablas

Our first stop was the small town of Santa Fe where Marc perfected his bomb on behalf of Germany. He actually came up with 2, the flying air guitar and the Kusseler roll.

The plan was to head from here to Looc stopping at Looc’s fish protection zone and reef along the way for a snorkel. All was going well until an official came out and asked if we had registered. Of course the answer was no but we will do it when we arrive in town AFTER our snorkel. This got him all upset and he raced back to get the big boss who came out in the big boat and escorted us to the shore to the awaiting police one of which told me he had killed 27 political extremists in a gun battle in southern Mindanao some years ago before he was wounded. After having the charges read to us while being recorded and photographed I managed to get our fine reduced from $46 to $9.30. The police kindly gave us a ride to town once all was settled.

Our next town up the west coast of Tablas was San Andres where a family took us under their wing taking us the waterfall in the rain.

The track was washed out in a lot of places but after a successful trip they kindly made us lunch accompanied by Tuba? their wine from the coconut tree.

After Tablas the island of Romblon, home of marble was our destination. Here we hired motorbikes. Our trusty machine turned out not to be so trusty with 2 puncture repairs needing to be attended to under burning pistons and running out of petrol on the way home. Lucky for Amanda it was dark so less people noticed her pushing me to the closest coke bottle filled with fuel. Which turned out to be not so far.