Though Darryl gave a good description on our visits to Donsol and Boracay I'd like to add a few notes.

Firstly about Donsol, it was just as the Lonely Planet book said, a town of somewhat Hemingwayian (if you can use such a word) place. If Wewak was Mogadishu to me already befor the pirate attac, Donsol was a minature Havanna. The colours, the noise, the people and the smell of pertol, fish and food. This was a place I really liked.

As told befor, we had anchored between a Ferris wheel and a cemetary, but in the morning we also realized that we had the communal rubbish dump to starboard at about 20 meters Luckily however we were windward, but dinghying in to the banka porr, i.e. mudbeach we had a taste of what the two dozen locals who were repairing the outer wall of said dump had to endure.

We strolled around town, found the 17th century church, had a look at an immense display of dolls of all sizes and uniforms and were informed it was st. Somebody, that is child, thus all the dolls. This reminded me of the fact that the Philippines is 80% catholic.

Walking the streets I kept an eye out for some shorts as two of my pairs more or less had come to their end. No luck however, only horrible "plastic" stuff. Eventually we found the closed marketn and boy was that a market! Really good looking veggies of all sorts, fruit, all kinds of interesting looking stuff in small bags and big sacks, spices and chicken feed! A quite suspct odour caught my nose, and to the right we saw a bout 20 meters of chicken in all forms, mostly chpped into pieces. A couple of guys were at it all the time meataxes galore.

The market was built partly over the at the moment dry river and on the other side was the also quite aromatic fish part. All kinds, from miniscule baitfish via really good looking sardines to parrot- and other reaf fish,  macreel, tuna, octopus and even a batfish!
I wouldn't have minded some sardines but Lars and espcially Darryl were less enthusiastic. No fish, but as a Brazilian sailor had tipped us, we bought both beer and tonic wholsale at a nearby hole in the wall.

When we came in to town for dinner we ended up at the square having draught beer sold by a German and local satay grilled on the street. I can't get it, there are less Germans than there are eg. Filippinos (abt. 80 versus 110 million) but you can't go anywhere without bunping in to one and every time they see it as the most natural thing in the world that I speak their lingo. Well we had real food, sort of, anyway and rode back to Nonok beach to the boat at record speed.

In the morning when we headed back to town for some shopping I noticed that there was a 40 footer in the middle of the reef a mile East from our origial anchorage.. Well, he  must have a very shallow draft, I thought and forgot the whole thing. We anchored and went shopping, first for money, then for some stuff like canned sardines (revenge is sweet)

Back at the boat Lars heard some guys on the radio talking about someone being stuck on a reef. We looked around and yes, the guy I saw earlier was leaning about 30 degrees to starboard, i.e. he was the stuck guy. The Brazilian, who by the way had been 13 years on his way and found a wife on another boat somewere i the Pacific and eventually gotten her after chasing her around the islands for quite a while, was approaching the stuck one as we motored towards it. When we came up to the Brazilian an Aussie sitting in the Brazilians boat declined help, as he had noted he had a big rock just to starboard. "I'll wait for high tide" he said and so we turned and hoisted sails towards Boracay.

As Darryl told you we got to Boracay, that is the Ibiza-Fuengirola-Capri etc. of the Far East. The contraast to what we had experienced so far was immense and in a way quite fun. We walked the beach road, that is hopped in an out of a few bars, but not the German one that seamed to have abiut 19.156 books for swapping. Well,  eventually on our way back we landed in Germany and of course all books were in German, I checked.
We also experienced the living model for Jabba the Hut, I have never ever in my life seen anyone half as big as this guy, he was quite nice though and sold me designer beer coolers for 150 each, that's about 3 dollars. Ziltch for Jabba if you ask me.

Anyway that was about it. Oh yes I almost forgot, I got myself a pair of new shorts, quite stylish, Finnish blue and white, of course, and costing me after haggling the incredible amount of 300 money. I changed at the place where we met the Swedish. 22 year old, who according to Darryl was ex military (he probably had noted the guy's tag and about 56 tattoos). According to himself the guy was going to marry a very nice looking Turkish girl, who looked about 30, no offence, she was really very good lookng, the next day.

Well, suddenly a big guy appears behind the bar bearing a t-shirt stating Boracay Yacht Club. I, who am not known to be shy, hail the guy and ask him about this nonexistant "club" The man gets excited and starts explining how the mayor and all other bureaucrats don't get it. I of course am of the same opinion and stick in a few comments what I would do if I was, as he is, the Commodore of the nonexcistant Royal Boat Club of the Paradise Island of Boracay. The guy suddelny turns around, opens a freezer, and grabs a beer, opens it after a few tries andvsays "I l ike this guy" the guy sais and gives me the beer. The nice (?!?!?!??!!) guy I am I puor half in a glass for Lars and Darryl and having finnished the stuff we leave.

The next day we walked up the beach, on the beach and got grilled by the sun and the sights were not what Junior had imagined. We strolled around and found the "Downtown" which was the same as the beach walk, but without the beach. Eventually someone got thirsty, I mean it was at lest close to ten, and we strolled in to a place called the Hobbit's
and had a beer. It took me about a minute to realize why the place was called what it was called, but it took to the second beer for Lsrs to get it. All the peolple working in the bar were actually Hobbits, and very nice such.

Eventua,lly we got hungry and headed back to the beach in order to find some grubb. A joint called "yellow cab" advertised "real" pizza and we grabbexd a table, ordered beer, and oh yeah, pizza, and sat down. An hour later we were still sitting, having finnished our second beer, and suddenly, first one, then a second and eventually a third pizza arrived. After a few bites I discivered some real anjovy and was very happy. The other guys didn't say anything, they were apparently in seventh heaven. Well, even heaven, at least pizza Hvdoesn't last forever, so we headed back to the boat and new islands of which I might tell you later.

Kenneth.

Kenneth Skickat från min Xperia™-surfplatta