December 7th, 2012:
We last left you about a six days ago heading off to the island of Palawan, in the western Philippines – and in the last six days an enormous amount has happened. We started off with a pretty routine 3 days in Puerto Princesa, looking around the town, taking the tour to the underground river/cave system (and one of the new “7 Wonders of the Natural World”) and making arrangements to head north for our week of honeymoon luxury. We have booked 8 nights, split between two tropical resorts, a 4 hour bus ride north of Puerto Princesa. This is to be the our very belated honeymoon that we never managed to take in the last 3 1/2 years of being married and it was something we’ve been looking forward to the entire trip.
Needless to say, things don’t always go as planned.
The day before we were to head up to the port town of Taytay (where we would catch a boat to the first island resort), we started hearing rumors of a Typhoon on it’s way into the area. We were slightly concerned (Felicia having just went through the Hurricane in NYC last month), but still jumped on the van we booked the next morning at 5:30am despite the light rain. The ride was really smooth and there was almost no other traffic on the road, but the further we got north the heavier the rain and finally when the van pulled into it’s stop in Taytay the winds were kicking up and throwing trees/branches/trash everywhere. We were in town about 4 1/2 hours before we were supposed to catch our boat, but judging from the fact that a category 5 typhoon was about to make landfall in the very town which we were now in, we had to figure something out VERY quickly.
We donned our rain jackets and jumped on a Tricycle (motorcycle taxi with sidecar) and had them take us to the booking office for the resort where I had to pound on the door before a hungover 20 year old answered the door. He mumbled about their company Christmas party the night before and the fact that their weren’t supposed to be any guest today because of the Typhoon, but as soon as he got the sleep out of his eyes he actually became super friendly and helpful. (In our defense, we did call the night before and we’re told that the Typhoon wouldn’t be an issue and everything should still be on schedule – we trusted the locals would know best)
By this point the winds we reaching up to gusts of 100mph, shit was flying everywhere, and for some reason my stomach started churning in a feverish way – not really the ideal time to start getting sick. Felicia and I sat in the concrete office building while our young friend made a few calls and tried to figure out what to do with us – we looked around and figured this building looked pretty solid and made a decision to just hold up there if necessary. While Felicia stayed in the office, I ran outside to the corner store and bought a 2 1/2 gallon jug of water, just in case. When I came out of the store, my head was spinning in a rapidly oncoming fever and I saw Felicia waving me over to follow up to a local guest house that had room and concrete walls (much of this town seemed to be thatched huts, so concrete was a necessity at this point).
I followed, soaking wet from rain and sweat, in a feverish haze and we checked in to a tiny room with no power just in time as the winds got even stronger. At this point, I found the bed and spent about 20 of the next 22 hours curled up there in feverish pain while the winds howled outside, 30′ stalks of bamboo snapped and fell on our little hut and anything that wasn’t nailed down went sailing.
The saddest part of the whole day is that I didn’t even have the strength to stand up much less take any pictures during the storm. Felicia did make a short video though:
Read Felicia’s take on the typhoon at her travel blog
Share your thoughts