We slept in a little bit this morning since our boat ride to leave the island was not until noon. When we did get up we started with a little bit of packing then headed off to Oscars for breakfast. We got to eat breakfast with a couple of the other interns which was nice. It was definitely a little sad knowing we would be saying good bye in a few hours. After breakfast we went off to the room to pack up all of our stuff, our friend from the dive shop, Jun Jun, showed up shortly after to get our bags and bring them to the shop for us. We snapped a few pictures of what had been our home for the last month and said good bye to our little simple room. We went back to Oscars to wait out the last hour hoping to catch as many people as possible to say goodbye to. While Jeff was gathering pictures and scuba info from Ryan and Garret, I went around and snapped a few pictures of the dive shop area. I even went next door to say goodbye to my little puppy friend Boracay that was always next door to the shop. She was a very cute but naughty puppy as she would often come and steal peoples slippers (flip-flops) that were left outside the dive shop. I went around and said my goodbyes to everyone I could find. By chance I even saw the little girl Quinn who had been my dance student at the disco weeks ago. Before I knew it the clock struck 12 and it was time to board the boat. As we left it was sad to see the island get smaller in the distance, as this had not really been a vacation, it was far more like a short term home. This really reiterated what Jeff and I had been telling people since we decided to move, we really enjoy and appreciate the island life. Now Oahu is very much so a different island than little Malapascua but it is a step in the direction that we want to go. It is all about finding a happy medium between the busy city and the secluded island village.
After about 25 minutes, we reached the Maya port on Cebu where we had arranged for a van to pick us up. This was the first car we had seen in a month and once inside the largest dose of air conditioning as well. It was a very bumpy 3 hour car ride to Cebu city, through a maze of villages and one lane roads due to the forever ongoing road construction. My stomach was not feeling so well this morning and the bumpy ride was not helping. The driver dropped us off at Bella Vista which was the hotel we stayed at the first night we arrived in Cebu. It felt very strange that it had already been a month since the last time we were in this hotel. After we dropped off our bags in the room, we had to grab a taxi to the SM mall so that Jeff could pick up his passport. We had sent the passports to Cebu city 2 weeks ago in order to extend our visas. The owner of the dive shop had picked mine up and brought it back to the dive shop but Jeff's passport was not available for pickup at that time. When we arrived at this mall it was absolutely massive, It was four stories and three wings of store after store. I later found out tht SM stands for super mall and boy was it ever. After a short search for a directory, we came cross an information booth and asked them for a map. They of course were all out of maps but she did point us in the right direction to find the travel agency that we needed. Fortunately when we arrived they had Jeff's passport and we could then focus on finding somewhere to eat. There were several restaurants and there was a food court, I found the food court to be rather confusing. There were at least 20 different places to choose from and all of them had large kettles of different kinds of food to build a plate from. They did not really have any prices on anything though and we were unsure what a lot of the food was. It did not help that by this point we were both very hungry and not in the right mental state to make a decision in this overwhelming enviroment. Eventually we chose to just eat at a Thai restaurant. The food was good but nothing to get excited about. We did not spend a lot of time in the SM since Nick, who had been one of the instructors when we started, had forgotten 2 boxes at the dive shop when he left for Cebu this morning. They sent the boxes with us and we were to meet up with him later tonight so he could reclaim it from us. We did not have a cell phone and when we had called his phone from the hotel he did not answer, so we did not want to be away for too long in case he showed up at the hotel. Interesting fact, in the Philippines cell phones do not have voicemail, so we could not even leave a message for him.
When we got back to the hotel he had called and left a message for us that they would stop by around 1800. Which it was now about 1815, they ensured us that nobody had stopped by looking for us so we went to the room grabbed our Ipad and took advantage of the wifi in the lobby while we waited. They showed up around 1900 which is surely island time for 1800. They were nice enough to buy us a beer for bringing their stuff down to Cebu. It was nice to sit and talk to Nick and his longtime girlfriend Lana. They are actually getting ready to buy their own resort, which from the sounds of it will be the kind of place we would like to visit. Their plan is to have a place that will not only have nice sand beaches but also offer up as many adventure sports as the geographical location will allow. It was a very nice laid back evening to end our last night in the Philippines. We then retired to our room where we had cranked up the air conditioning. We had been so used to sleeping in a super hot room with only a fan and on a 4" thick foam excuse for a mattress. In our room here it was nice and cool with what seemed at the time like the most comfortble mattress and blanket in the world. I knew I was going to get a good nights sleep tonight.
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