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 do hope so. 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.
I know, Volcan de Fuego as seen from Acatenango Volcano oozes soo good that you might question your purpose in life. While the experience was not a series of unfortunate events as told by Lemony Snicket to children, I am saddened to say that this post will be an expectation vs. reality one, in that while the weather forecast was the most ideal on the day of our hike, the clouds seemed to have gotten too excited with our arrival at the camp that they wanted all the attention to themselves. You have been warned and if you still decide to carry on, my, I must’ve said something right in this paragraph. The photo is courtesy of Tropicana Hostel’s Instagram account.
As per the timestamps of my photos, we arrived at Nacpan Beach in the neighborhood of 30 minutes after the quick wallow at Nagkalit-kalit Falls. Our mode of transfer was a shuttle (van) which the landlady of El Nido Sands Inn arranged exclusively for our group. Other modes of transportation include renting a tricycle or a scooter (tried the latter on my second visit).