WEEK 15–Puerto Princesa

Saturday 14 April
The skipper got all the old batteries out and with the help of Chris got them into Bob – two of them weigh 60 kg each! They took them in and the new batteries were delivered and they got them, back to the boat and put in their place – at last! We have 300 amps instead of 400 but at least they work! The skipper had been very grateful to Andy for making him get a generator before we left Darwin as he had used it a lot to charge the old batteries. Had a clean up on the boat then Cilantro, Braveheart and we all went to Kaluis, the special restaurant, for dinner – we had to book and used our ‘winnings’ from Melbourne Cup to pay for the meal. I say ‘winnings’ when in actual fact we halved our money but as we had a bet on every horse it was winnings! Had a wonderful meal with a lovely bottle of wine which was called Tall Horse and it had a picture of a giraffe on it!

Monday 16 April
We walked down to the big blue church we had seen when we came in and notice a park across the road with an ancient entry and discovered it had been a US POW camp and on 15 December 1943 143 Americans had been ordered into the air raid shelters and had kerosene and hand grenades thrown down on them and were burnt to death – only 11 survived. We haven’t seen a lot of American cemeteries or camps before and it brings home their part in the war too.

Wednesday 18 April
We were picked up at 8am by bus and headed to Sabang. The lady sitting in front of us held up one peanut and with a mouthful of nuts asked if we would like a nut – we declined. She must have thought we looked really strange (or hairy!!) as she stared at me for a good part of the way. One thing we have noticed with Asian women is they have a lack of body hair on their arms. We had two stops along the way – one for souvenirs and the other to take photos of the spectacular karsts with rice paddies around them. The scenery was quite stunning and two hours later we pulled up at Sabang and the sea was as flat as and such a beautiful colour – shades of aqua. Such a difference to when we were last there! We had a very early lunch then went to the Bangka stop and our guide got us on the 12.30 bangka with the rest of our group. It was a 10 minute Bangka ride across to the beach then a short walk through the jungle where the smaller bangkas collected us after we had donned life jackets and helmets. There were lots of swiftlets flying around in front of and in the cave and heaps of bats in the cave. The river is an 8.2km long underground river which flows directly to the sea and is visited by 700 – 1,000 people a day so we only went 1.2km in. Unfortunately our guide wasn’t terribly interested in explaining things to us and stayed very close to the noisy boat in front of us so we couldn’t hear him anyway which kind of detracted from the granduer of the place. And they give the one torch to the person at the front. It was wonderful but over too soon. I think one of the special tours to go 4km would be good but knowing how hard it was to get permits for this far we wouldn’t have even attempted it. We walked back and saw a couple of rather large monitor lizards – they really are like small komodo dragons – and some monkeys who were intent on grabbing people’s bags. Then it was back on the bus and we were back at the Yacht Club by 5pm. It was a good day out.

The rest of the week has been taken up by walking around he town, shopping and eating!

We have checked out the pearls here and found them to be expensive – I am not sure how much pearls usually cost but these are hugely more expensive than we paid in the Bandas. Mind you, nicer pearls if you like them big. Filippino pearls are a yellowy or ebony colour and are very big – about three times bigger than the pearls we normally see. We have seen one necklace for 60,000 pesos ($1,428) and another for 120,000 pesos ($2,857). A single pearl depending on its quality is $50 - $70.

Anyway we are now starting to do some timings and passage planning and will head south back towards Miri towards the end of next week.

Hope you are all well. Missing you.
Love Dell and Peter