Bicol region: Camarines Sur…where life embraced me, where I lost track and found a treasure.

Hi dear friends and readers,

It’s been a while, and that usually means I have a lot to tell. I’ll keep it simple though. The place I’ve been the last 14 days left such an impression on me that I paused my traveling and returned to Manila. One reason is to catch up with work, main reason is to give it all a place. When you experience something such mindboggling, you better hold yourself for a while, so you create clean space in your mind for the next destination. Otherwise those next destinations might be thin air.
What did I experience? An amazing example of ‘Less Is More’. Away from all luxury and comfort, but feel something that touches your heart in a way that I can’t yet describe. Life in a small barangay (village) where I ended up accidently, because the main place I wanted to go was closed. Planning to stay two days, being hold up because of typhoon alarms and a wild sea (a boat was capsized), being captured by the local way of living and end up staying roughly 2 weeks.
True happy people, friendly inviting people, welcoming cheerful children. Simple life, basic life. People that don’t want the luxury of our ‘western civilisation’, give them all the money, they will stay living in their selfmade nipa huts. Working each day for tomorrow and enjoy & share what’s left of it. Neighbours being happy and cream joy for each other when they catch a big amount of fish and share some with a big smile. Chickens, roosters, dogs, cats, humans and their little ones living in the same place, free, above, under, wherever. Kitchens made of some bricks, sand, wood as heating material, and kettle & mamas produce great simple food. Cats and chickens help doing the dishes. Stunning untouched nature and scenery, huge limestones, funky uninhabited islands & spending the night in open sky, beautiful corals, enchanted lagoons, magical swamps, caves, massive rain, weird wether-phenomenons, fishing & swimming every day, farming rice. Drinking Matador, Red Horse & 80 full proof gin (& getting the heaviest drunk trip ever), taking the bangka and paddle your way along the practically untouched coast & meet people that live very secluded, live from fresh springwater, coconuts and fishing.
I’m still wondering if I did find paradise? See yourself, a big load of pictures, mixed up, no comments, I think it all speaks for itself

Bicol region: Donsol & the active vulcano Mount Mayon.

Ok, I editted this post, I found a nice imitation of Starbucks in Naga (temporary pitstop before going to Camaroan, an as good as undiscovered paradise), which gives free wifi.

The Philippines only get better and better. I had an unforgettable experience swimming with the whalesharks in Donsol. Giant plankton eating fish of 8m long, very rare creatures. It really gives you the goosebumps being so close with them. Their mouth was practically as big as my body. They were so big that I wasn’t able to get them in full glory on my cam. The water was also pretty blurry, so if I stayed on a short distance my cam wasn’t able anymore to capture them. Also you had to swim your brains out to keep up with them, so it was a fairly impossible task without the right gear.
After a few days Donsol we headed to Mount Mayon. This is an active vulcano, which most recent explosion was in 2006. On the day we left, the vulcano was in alert level 2. This means no walking on the trails and no climbing. Level 5 is BOOM.

And um, lots of pictures, here we go again…

Donsol coastal area

jumping of the bridge…

Whaleshark spotting

here’s one of them, well at least a part of. In total we spotted around 8 to 10, a success!

One of the bamboo houses in Donsol

ricefarmers home

I love these selfmade cars and the creativity of Filipinos

posing girls in Donsol

strolling around around sunset at the beach…great fun

at first I thought it were feathers, as I got closer I noticed this was some kind of weird squid. All those tentacles moved.

in Legaspi, an old jeepney

view at Mount Mayon from the tricycle

an ruined church at Mnt Mayon

see what happened?

my two companions Gerald and Shayne

local people living at Mnt Mayon

I never saw this before! Look at those oily colors in the clouds.

We drove all around the vulcano. Here I was sitting on the roof of the jeepney. Fun! Also two chickens joined us, from one you can see some feathers if you look well.

sunset while on the roof of the jeepney.

yepyep, happy happy, joy joy!

for a change it’s sunRISE! You know we get up the last 5 days around 5.30 am?

basket in Legaspi

Cagsawa street image

you find a lot of old spanish churches here.

This is actually the top of a church. The rest is covered under lava, it happened during one of the last eruptions of Mayon. A girl who lost her parents during the eruption guided us.

weird spiders I found around those ruins.

It looks like this branch is saying sh*t, no?

That’s it for now. Next is camping at the beaches of Camaroan, then Masbati, and then up to the Central Visayas.
Cheerio!