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  • Day 8

    Isla Gigantes day 2

    March 24, 2018 on the Philippines ⋅ ☀️ -9 °C

    Today we got woken up at 6am by some random rave music being blared out from somewhere near our huts. Tried to sleep through it til 7am when we had to be up.
    Had breakfast of scallop adobo (local speciality), fried egg and... you guessed it, rice!
    Headed to get the boat, had to wade out to butt level and then fight our way up the plank from the water. Had a 20 min journey to get to the first island of our island hopping day.
    The first island was called Cabugao Gamay. Walked up to a viewing point where you could see a sandbar across the island. Took lots of photos but then it started chucking it down, and I mean like monsoon level rain! Took shelter in a little hut, although the rain was just blowing in sideways so we were all soaked anyway. We then tried to make our escape onto the boat. There was a problem getting the anchor back on board so we were floating around for quite a while whilst a poor guy was diving in trying to rescue the anchor. We eventually managed to set sail.
    The next island was called Sand Bar and was essentially a strip of sand in the sea with a few trees on it. We went for a swim here, although the currents were very strong and there was some pretty big waves! Our boat went to take some people somewhere else and so we had to wait for it to get back. While we were waiting we decided to take lots of photos, make pyramids, jump shots etc. The tour guide brought us over some freshly steamed scallops and oysters which were delicious. After what felt like forever, with no access to any of our stuff including suncream, the boat eventually came back.
    Next we headed to an island called Antonia. This was a bit more touristy than the others, but still pretty quiet. Here we went on banana boats and jet skis which were easily the most fun thing I’ve ever done! Didn’t fall off at any point either which I was quite pleased with as it looked painful! Managed to get the jet ski up to 52 mph (which is the top speed) which on water felt like about 100. At this point we all started to notice how sun burnt we were getting but by this point it was too late.
    We then headed to our last island - Tankie Lagoon. Here there was a beautiful little lagoon hidden behind the rocks. The water was super warm and clear so we had another swim. Then some people went off to do cliff jumping. I sat this one out because the route up looked pretty treacherous. Everyone made it ok and all did the jump which was probably about 5m. Few cuts and bruises though I think.
    After this, we headed back to our island. We had a bit of chill out time so some people had naps. I went and had a bucket shower to try and cool off and get rid of the sand that was everywhere. At this point the sunburn was really starting to set in. Burnt everywhere, very sore!
    We had some dinner and a couple of drinks and then I headed to bed as I was feeling pretty exhausted. Some of the others stayed up to do karaoke.
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