After paying a visit to Nagkalit-kalit Falls and Nacpan Beach, we were back at El Nido Sands Inn before three o’clock and had ample time to rest and prepare for our fourth day in Palawan which involved nothing else but a good swim at Long Beach in San Vicente. Around two and a half hours later, we got the ball rolling for our transit.
Prior to bungee jumping in Costa Rica I only had one such experience which was in Gunma alongside a Japan-based postgraduate classmate. It wasn’t what I hoped for for the reason that the elastic cord was attached to the waist and not to the ankles. (Choosy pa?) Nonetheless, it was still as fun and exhilarating. And oh, did I mention that on a cable car 143 meters high, at the time of writing jumping Monteverde Extremo Park’s is the highest bungee jump in all of Central America?
It was my penultimate day in town and after taking things to greater heights at Monteverde Extremo Park, joining a night walk, and getting a visit from white-faced monkeys at Que Tuanis, I could’ve just stayed at the hostel and lazed around. But then, the front desk attendant, who ended up calling me Josh during my stay (and I just let her because who knows if I was a Josh in another life), told me to visit the Ficus tree in Monteverde.
Thanks to how the Internet has evolved, people are learning about things that have been under their noses all along. For instance, it was only until travel blogs were ubiquitous and social media was rampant with misinformation that I became aware of Bega Falls, located in the municipality just next to my hometown in the province of Agusan del Sur. Better late than never, I guess?
This trip was part of my repatriation; I won’t beat around the bush and will be blunt that to fully enjoy a Pacific Coast Highway road trip in one day, you have to do it in more than just a day. Did that make sense? I hope it did. Then again, if you really need to traverse it in such a short period, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re no longer in for some stopovers.
The story of my repatriation to the Philippines begins with the reopening of Juan Santamaria International Airport and the only way of getting back to the land of promise being through the US, particularly Houston where our high school valedictorian by the name of Joey was wrecking havoc. After my Spirit Airlines flight got rescheduled and cancelled at least twice and the airline postponed the resumption of their operations to Houston, I conceded to flying with United Airlines. From there I was to fly to Manila through Taipei via EVA Air.