Where's Scott?

We’re running late for the ferry, and fight off the swarm of porters vying for our business to get to the Supercat counter. We meet Mabel’s sister who’s joining us for the 2 hours to Ormoc on Leyte, and the time flys by after Seb sets up his mini movie theater and we watch the first episode of Lost. We file off the boat and are met by 12 of Mabel’s extended family who’ve all come in on a small flatbed 4×4 to meet us (and for a much anticipated dinner at Jolleybee, the local KFC clone, Seb’s treat).

After dinner, we start to organize in the truck. The family makes no bones about it, we have to sit in the kingcab, with the remaining nine somehow managing to arrange themselves on small plastic chairs, squat positions, or sitting on the sidewall in the open flatbed. The space efficiency is incredible, but when I see four adults and three kids all crammed on a motorcycle, I realize this truck is spacious! (7 on a bike, and Americans can’t get 2 in a Hummer). The trip back to Mabel’s village is no walk in the park. It’s about 2 hours, the last 45 mins of which are a 10 mph bumpy crawl along an unpaved hazzard course of mud holes, rocks and slippery hill climbs (the last one of which we barely make). It’s hot in the cab, no fan let alone AC, but I can’t image how the family in the back is coping with the tossing and twisting. When we reach a lighted bit of road, a sneak a peek back, and they all look quite happy. It’s clear Jollybee is worth a few hours of discomfort, both ways. The truck’s horn is kept quite warm with liberal use (to scare ghosts away Mabel explains later), and the road is crowded in many places with dogs, chickens, kids, and crowds of adults “hanging out”; the road is clearly where the party’s at.