An Ultimate Adventure

This day started like any other day here in the Philippines: warm azure water, tender sun, tender breeze, and mangos. Seven hours ago I couldn’t imagine that it would turn into an ultimate adventure.

To begin today’s story, I’d like to say that I drive a semi-automatic bike here in the Philippines, instead of an automatic moped that I really used to. This is something in between an automatic moped and a real motorcycle, which means that I shift gears with my foot. I am very excited about it as it gives me extra 100 points of coolness on the road and knowledge of that my next step would be a real bike and hundreds of miles ahead.

I decided to go to the market to get some fruit, at least this is what I told everyone. My true intention was driven by a running line in my head “road-freedom-road-freedom-wind-speed-control”. My ears demanded to hear the roar of the engine, and my eyes were hungry to see changing landscapes of the Panglao island.

The decision was made! I decided to explore the island, go further by the roads where the asphalt ends, find hidden beaches and caves and after that go to the market.

After driving 20 km from the house the blue sky suddenly became black and gray and I drove into a wall of rain. I saw a church and I thought it would become my refuge during the rain. The people were gathering and I thought how lucky I was to learn more about the culture through religion. I sat down on a bench and began to look at the Spanish colonial heritage. The church is really beautiful with some amazing murals on its ceiling, so I sat down being excited to see what will happen next and suddenly they carried the coffin … Yes, I came to the funeral. The idea to hide from the rain didn’t seem as good anymore. The next 30 minutes I was sitting on the floor outside the church with other Filipinos hiding from the rain. Once again and suddenly the rain has stopped, the sun started shining – let’s hit the road!

In about 5 km the same story repeated – the rain started pouring heavily but at this time I was surrounded by fields. That’s it. The drops were whipping by skin, and my eyes were filling up with water, I could barely see and it was very painful. My two options were to either stop and wait or to keep going, so I kept going … home.

Trust me, it was a real challenge, and I really hope that Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis and Angelina Joli will read this post and get really upset, because I had this adventure in real life, not in the movies  😆