Where's Scott?

Mabel tells us that we’re renting a house down the beach – a little two story, 3 bedroom with a sleeping porch and a kitchen. The place is cute and certainly cheap enough, about $20 a day for the whole family! There’s a generator out back to power up the evenings, and a open well with a few plastic buckets to pull up some bathing/flushing water… and location! We’re _on_ the beach, which means you walk out the door and you’re _on_ the beach, waves are crashing 20ft in front of you, sand and palm trees on either side, and a few small fishing boats here and there that the local fisherman take out after nightfall.

We drop our bags, and stretch out on the bamboo benches under the house’s small detached hut and enjoy the gentle afternoon breeze. Mabel’s family breaks out the cards and starts a marathon session of 3-man Gin Rummy, which they’re all excellent at and school us well (ie. we’re handed our heads). Rummy is apparently the game of choice on Malapascua, and everyone plays it from childhood… Mabel is an old hand and holds well with the best of them.

We’ve brought a snorkel set, and so we’re set for a little exploration, and Seb and I make plans to make a trip out to a rock or two a few hundred meters off shore. The family’s well convinced we’ll be eaten by sharks (there’s an unreasonable fear of them here, despite even the rumor of an attack), but since we’ve been swimming with them for a couple weeks, neither of us are much concerned.

All our cooking and cleaning is handled by Mabel’s sisters Raquel and Rotel, and her aunt Gemma. Rotel especially is a workhorse, anticipating our needs and popping up out of nowhere with a towel, some fried pork, or a bottle of Coke just as the words are passing our lips: “I’m a little thirsty, I’d love a… oh! Thanks Rotel!”. The men, on the other hand, are a different story; while the women work tirelessly cooking, washing (there appears to be an endless stream of dirty clothes that need washing), cleaning dishes, sweeping, scolding kids, hanging laundry, or fetching food or sundries from the store – the men hang around the bamboo shack to chat, play cards, drink coconut wine or Tanduay and generally, well, lay about.

Noel wants to know if we’re up for dog again, and we explain that “dog is a friend in the West” in as polite and respectful a way as possible. In a convenient accident, a dog is “hit by a bike and killed” just that evening! (A bike doing 20 hitting a dog? Hahaha) We still decline 😉