Philippines Part II (Penned during the voyage…but due to backlog of work upon return, only able to post now).

The waves are crashing ashore only 50 yards from the dining room table, of the open walled villa where Vince and I are now staying on the private island of Mangenguey Our hostess Helena advised us at breakfast that we should be mentally prepared for the possibility that our stay on her island, which she likes to call Utopia, may be extended, as a result of Typhoon Megi which is currently waddling its way to the Northwest of us in the South China Sea, and sending large waves and occasional bands of heavy rain showers. Helena says we are now conserving diesel fuel for the generator, so power will be only on briefly at one pm today and then turned off again until dinner. I have an hour and 24 minutes left on the computer battery and am will use the current cloudy spell to catch up on the Bulletin.

As with any good tropical vacation, the days have started to all run together, so at this point, it seems best to write from today backwards to where I last left off.

Our current digs consist of a main house which is built into the side of a slight hill which looks onto one of the island’s three beaches. Helena moved onto the island five years ago from New York where she owned a self-named tapas restaurant which she describes as located between the Blue Man Group and Indochine on the lower East Side.

Helena is Catalan which explains our menu which has varied from almond croissants and fresh fruit to seafood Boullabaise(?) and last night a chicken and sausage paella. Once again the tropical mindset, has allowed me to bury the lead—as only hours after arriving and coming all this way—we learned that in New York Helena and her husband turn out to be our neighbours. Their apartment is at 147^th and Convent which is only three blocks away from our condo on 146^th and Riverside Drive.

We are sharing Utopia with a couple from London who we formed an easy bond with during our rather harrowing adventure getting to the island. We met at the dock on the Island of Coron, on the day Megi was upgraded to a “Super Typhoon” and was crashing ashore to the North of Luzon, the biggest island in the Philippines. Coron Island is 40 minutes to the south by turboprop, which meant we were more than a couple hundred miles from the eye of the storm, but I was still a little bit surprised when I saw the 17 foot wooden catamaran that that arrived at the dock to take us to the island.

Alan and Peter did their best to make the boat storm worthy, erecting a makeshift plastic wrap barrier that rose about three feet in front of us, then they handed out umbrellas which our hostess Ruby Ann unfurled and poked out under the canopy in front of us to shield us from the worst of the rain. We rode in heavy rains for more than an hour, and then when the rain let up, we next encountered rising sea swells—as the nose of our little boat crashed up and down—as the waves grew from three to five feet and higher. It was around this point in our journey that I remembered that I had placed my passport in my right hand pocket of my now soaked shorts, expecting that I might need to show identification at some point. It was still thankfully there, but somewhat curled and very damp. It will be interesting to learn whether the nifty new electronic strip Uncle Sam now includes in the passport still works when I try to get back Stateside next week.

Anyway, during all the pelting of rain and crashing of water from the deck into our open cabin, we got to know our British companions. Matty works in the computer technology industry and Thea is an IBM consultant.

Flash forward to the present—“My gosh” Vincent exclaims, looking up from his copy of Obama’s Wars as the sky has opened up with another band of rain showers. We have moved to the far side of the dining room, as a good bit of the rain is making its way onto the beach end of the long dining table.

We had about an hour of sun yesterday, enough time to get in a nice swim and to walk the beach in front of the main house.

In addition to Helena there is a staff of three men and three women on the island. We were originally supposed to stay in one of the small cottages, but Sanjee the main housekeeper suggested that Helena “upgrade us” and the British couple to the main house, where we each have a private bedroom upstairs at opposite ends of the house connected by a library that doubles as a small dining room, where we enjoyed a candlelight dinner.

We intend to return to “Utopia” again someday soon…hopefully with friends and family. Helena is a wonderful hostess, should would have forced to sun to shine all day—were it in her power. Instead she RubyAnn, Belinda and Danji gave us the run of the place, it is a wonderful spot…and we wish them all great success.