NOT JUST on time but even ahead of time is AirAsia, landing – smoothly – at the Puerto Princesa Airport full 15 minutes ahead of ETA. Perfect start for a well-planned, hoped-for perfect weekend with the wife.
Exactly 254 easy steps from the airport is Turissimo Garden Hotel, ever our home away-from-home in Palawan.
Refreshing drink and fast check-in and off to the office managing the Puerto Princesa Underground River – the sole object of this travel.
No, requests for early reservations by walk-in travellers are not entertained anymore, they have to show up and make the arrangements themselves. Yeah, right, ain’t that what walk-in really means?
But we did not know.
Anyways, I told the wife, getting booked for the river is a breeze. Done it just last March with the media boys.
“Fully booked for tomorrow (Nov. 17), a few slots in the afternoon of Sunday (Nov. 18).” The man at the counter told us, vaporizing all our plans for the perfect weekend.
But we were flying out 1:40 p.m. of Sunday. Our only time was Saturday.
“We can put you in the waiting list.” It had already over 40 names in it.
The wife and I were so dejected we suddenly remembered we haven’t had our lunch yet and it was past 2 p.m.
So what were we to do but go to Inato for the best chicken in town. On the way, our tricycle driver – yeah, trikes are the main mode of transport in the city – hearing our predicament volunteered his assistance. There is some travel agency he said he knew that may have some open slots for the PPUR.
Some pa-consuelo I thought of it as I got out of the trike. But the wife thanked him before giving him P80 for the fare that cost less than P20. For which he thanked her profusely.
So sorry, I told the wife. Maybe, we can just do Honda Bay for some island hopping and snorkelling. There will be PPUR next time around…
We were halfway into our meal of grilled tuna, adobong kangkong, and barbequed chicken when the trike driver came back, all smiles.
Hurried our lunch and zoomed in his trike to the Morning Express travel agency.
Yes, they still had two slots to complete their list of 25 for Saturday. I had never been as fast as getting three grand from my wallet as then and there – for the whole PPUR package, transport and lunch included.
Gave the trike driver P200 back to Turissimo Hotel.
“Sobra-sobra na po ito,” he said, trying to hand me back P100. Which I smilingly refused.
The lesson of this story: When all else fails, leave it to the trike driver.
There is a greater lesson for me here though.
Tricycle drivers make my worst nightmares.
A tricycle trying to overtake me along MacArthur Highway in the dead of night scratched the whole length of my old Pajero, on the driver’s side.
A tricycle bumped into my old Crown breaking its taillight.
A tricycle scratched the fender of the old CRV driven by my daughter.
The Avanza driven by my son has had two run-ins with tricycles, the last one resulting to a cracked bumper, smashed headlight, crushed fender and hood.
I tend to go homicidal whenever I encounter tricycles on the highway. It’s no place for them but, damn it, they lord over it.
Came this trike driver in Puerto Princesa, and I found some redemptive values in the objects of my abomination.
God is great! So it was with that feeling on-high that the wife and I took in the subterranean river and got even higher on the spiritual plane with the magnificence of His creation. Such magnitude that the grandiosity of words cannot approximate even but a fraction of it. You just have to be there. Feel it. Believe.
A fitting culmination of this Puerto Princesa experience – Sunday Mass at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral. The wife had never been as happy in any of our previous travels.
