Jomalig Island

Monday, December 8 at sea in the northern Philippines.

The seas had subsided by the morning and once more life was pleasant on board. After breakfast there was a talk by Stella on Abacá , the fibres obtained from a banana plant. She had spent five years producing a documentary there on the work of these Dreamweavers and was obviously enamoured by it at the time. Her film was shot around the year 2000. She had then taken them and their work to Manila and I think it was exhibited in the museum there. Unfortunately, she did not have a sample of the finished product to show us which was slightly disappointing.

At 11 am, we had a tour by one of the junior engineers of the engine room , which was bright and shiny, but also very hot and noisy down in the depths of the ship. After lunch there was nothing until 3 pm, when we had a briefing. This was followed by trivia where we were teams of six, obviously without David! Our team finished in the middle but the questions were extremely hard and I have never had a trivia with such a poor success rate: it would seem more sensible to allow a few more answers to be correct!

Soon after this we went for a walk round all the decks which we had not explored before and then went up to the outside of deck six for a passion fruit cocktail which was sumptuous, but there were no tapas to go with it. The food at dinner was not good, we did not think the salmon was even salmon, and the scallops were certainly not scallops, but we had a good conversation with two Australians, Gail and Charlie.

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Tuesday, December 9. Jomalig Island, Polillo Islands Group, Northern Philippines.

We boarded the Explorer to go ashore at 8:30 am and then had 15 minutes on hold as they could not get the craft level to descend from the ship. This was eventually done by moving the passengers from one end of the Explorer to the other . We then got to shore and about eight passengers got to the beach but then the crew decided it was too difficult to disembark the remaining 30 odd of us, although they did have several tries . So we cruised up and down the shoreline for some 20 minutes, watching the locals dance, all very colourful. We could also see the severe undercutting of the beach which had been gradually eroded over the last few years, helped along by the recent typhoon of November 8. We got back to the ship before 10 and then had another problem with getting the Explorer level with the ship and all four engineers had to be called out to try and manoeuvre it into place. This probably took 15 minutes or so but we had nothing else to do anyway.

After lunch We went out again in the Explorer to another beach on the south side of the island. The locals had dispatched all the performers from the original site by motorbike to this area, Where we did indeed get ashore followed by a 90 minutes walk through the village, e after watching a very colourful display on the beach. We walked over a river where there were lots of outriggers. We also saw them replacing roofs destroyed by the recent typhoon and saw sweet potatoes and herbs growing along the roadside. There were colourful guides who took us in groups of eight. Ours was called Honey. We walked as far as a copra depot where they roasted the coconut shells to make copra and charcoal. By the time we got back to the beach there was an Explorer to take us back to the ship. So I did not bother to try to get a swim thinking that I could always get one on the morrow. By the time we got back to the ship, people were saying that the morrow was a sea day , which was not what our program said at all but it turned out to be the truth. At the 5.15 briefing the expedition leader, Dawn, tried to justify this but did not do a very good job. Also at the very last minute she suddenly announced that the evening’s barbecue was in fact not up on deck but in the dining room. So at 6 pm, we went down to the barbecue which was just meat barbecued on the kitchen grill . But it was in fact quite pleasant although the steak was not of a high-quality at all. The salads were great and there were nice cheese afterwards, instead of a sickly dessert. Malcolm Fraser again shared a bottle of Shiraz with us. After dinner I went up to the lounge and participated in a game session in a team of four and quite enjoyed this.

And so to get another early night and the thought of another full sea day ahead of us.

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