Siargao Diaries Day 1: Room with a View

We ( me and my buddy Jr) were booked on a 1055am flight to the island of Siargao. We left Bulacan early to catch the first of 2 flights to our island destination. When we arrived at Terminal 3, the counter for our cebu flight had just opened. We were first to queue. This is where the comedy starts. As the check in officer encoded our names in the computer, he was surprised to see too many tickets being printed. It took a while before he realized we were taking 2 flights. Then he asked me if our final destination was Surigao. I immediately corrected him. Then he asked me how to spell Siargao ( hehehe ). So i did. He left for a few minutes to ask his coworker for the airport code for Siargao.At this point, i feared for our bags. It had happened to me before on a flight to Busuanga, when our bags were left back. Fearing that we wont have any clothes to wear, i asked Jr to carry the other bag and checked in our gear bag. When we have boarded the plane,it rained. I got a bit worried when our plane had not taken off as scheduled. It had been delayed because of Pres GMA's party, so I wasnt the only passenger who were giving the flight attendants a disgruntled look. After 45 minutes, the plane took off.

We arrived in Cebu before 10am. We were still on time. When we heard our flight number being called, we followed the short queue of passengers headed to a small plane, prob 60 seater. We settled on our seats and waited for instructions. 10 minutes before the scheduled time of departure, the FA announced over the speakers, " Welcome to Flight 5j 569 bound for Ozamis. " Both of us jumped off from our seats and hurriedly got our bags from the overhead compartment. Honestly, I don't even know where on earth Ozamis is. I approached the other FA but she was as clueless as we were. The foreign passengers remained seated, while the other local passengers were laughing in disgust. After about 5 minutes, the FA was back in the intercom, not the slighest bit apologetic for the confusion, this time announcing the correct flight number. We settled back to ur seats, quite relieved actually. Thankfully, the flight was smooth, and short. We were in Siargao Island in 35 minutes.

Upon disembarking, all i could think of was my brown adidas bag, whether it flew with us on the plane, or if it was en route to another airport. Luckily, Jr immediately spotted it while the airport crew were loading the baggages onto the baggage cart. With all our stuff accounted for, we found ourselves mounting a habal habal, at a cost of 400pesos each. The trip was bumpy,with most roads unpaved and rocky. And the driver, even if reminded how wet and slippery the road was, drove really fast. After 45 minutes, we reached the town of General Luna, site of the famous Cloud Nine. This is where all the action happens, and where most of the resorts are located. We finally settled in OCean 101 resort, owned by Michael, an australian and her wife Wilya. Liezl, one of the staff, showed us around, accompanied us to our room on the 2nd floor of a concrete building. The balcony had a spectacular, unobstructed view of the Pacific Ocean, with a couple of rock islands nearby, being bashed by equally tall waves. We had reached the resort past 2pm. There was no activity to do now, but eat, sleep, roam the grounds, experience the sunset, and be ready for the next day. Not bad for our first day.