Where's Scott?

I feared I’d never sleep between the roosters crowing and the monster fan thundering by my bed (without the fan would be mosquito city), but I slept better than I had in days and woke dreaming of Mangos. We didn’t. have any formal plans for the day, and as soon as I mentioned Mangos, a bus to San Isidro trundled through town; “Go, no go?” We jumped the bus, half at the thought of more of the perfect Mangos we’d had in Cebu, and half just to see how a full bus navigated such a treacherous road. The bus really appears to be a lifeline here; it makes frequent stops to collect or drop baskets of goods as well as people (everything from power line cables to open buckets of fish) and everyone comes out to grab an item or swing something up on top. The bus is also, by far, the smoothest ride around, coming close to comfortable!

San Isidro isn’t much more that a two street town, with an obviously colonially inspired park in the middle complete with a fisherman statue. The fish market (for a fishing town) was very discouraging, having space for thousands of fish and sporting an inventory of 3 (2 small, 1 medium). We founds our mangos though, and Seb embarked on a small shopping spree for Mabel’s family (plates, shoes etc). Our “rental” truck tracked us down a few hours into our adventure, so we had an easy return ticket, and after a nice pork and mango lunch, we headed back to distribute our loot.

Have wheels, will travel, and we’re soon in Tabango to buy dinner and visit the closest icafe. Seb makes short work of contacting all his pilot buddies on Skype when we hear what’s on the dinner menu: Burikat (meaning “callgirl” in Visaya based on how she walked as a puppy) – yes, you read that correctly, roadkill, doggy roadkill. Hey, this is the Philippines, and if we’re here to experience the rural lifestyle, that doesn’t mean we stop with the local “rhumm” (Tanduay, foul stuff but 70c a liter!) or the Karioke (which we’re terrible at, but at least we try 😉