4 boats and bioluminescence

Another travel day ;) - we relaxed in our tiny hotel room for a few hours in the morning before heading to the airport.

I've been a bit disappointed with the lack of Pinoy coffee so far, but having read again it seems like the coffee region is in the south of the country (advised against travelling to here at the moment). Seeing an Illy sign at the airport was rather pleasing. Also my Italian counterpart suggested pizza, which I gladly agreed to. I have found after trying to consume a lot of Filipino food in a short space of time, that it has already become a bit boring. Very meat orientated and not much else.

Fast forward 1 hour, 20 mins and we had arrived in Puerto Princessa, the main city on the island of Palawan (to the west of Cebu, it's shaped like a sword). The map said we were a 10 min walk to our hotel but we decide to take our first tricycle ride of the trip instead. It's good fun!

We arranged a firefly tour that evening. A 15 min minibus transfer got us to a docking area. We got on a boat with about 30 other people and headed out to another boat to eat dinner on (boat transfer #1). I've never been a fan of buffet food at the best of times, it's sat there for x amount of hours waiting to be consumed. In fact we think the source for our weeks worth of digestive discomfort was probably from the last buffet food in Bohol. So we tried to see if we could get a cheaper tour price without the food but it was included. At dinner we spoke to some guys from Australia (there seem to be a higher concentration of tourists on this Island) who had just been on a free diving course. I can't imagine doing that after my recent diving experience.

We then got back on boat 1 (boat transfer #2) before heading away from the sea to the river entrance that we would go down for the tour. We turned back shortly afterwards as the river boat we were due to get on had broken down, so back to the food boat, to pick up a spare river boat from it to take it back down towards the river. Once we got on the river boat (boat transfer # 3, we were told this boat would have to be towed by a smaller boat (I think that's at least boat number 5 of this story).

De-boating aside, we saw flashes of light in the water as we got close to the mouth of the river. These were glowing jelly fish, which apparently don't sting like most of them. A few minutes in and we started to see the fireflies. We were told that these are the size of half a grain of rice and that it's the males who light up more (to attract attention). Either side of the river were Mangrove trees, the fireflies lit them up like Christmas tree lights. They also react to sound and our tour guide seemed to enjoyed shouting out "Blink", "And again" & "One more time please".

A few more yards down the river we watched a few of the flies flying/glowing out in the open. One headed towards the boat, the tour guide tried to catch it and he missed and it went behind a gentleman's glasses. He was now the scene of a glowing display and much humour amongst the guests. Apparently that's only happened once before. We boat transferred #4 back onto the main boat and went back to the shore.

Bowls of rice; 13

Selfie sticks seen; 10 (should I snap some?)

"It's More fun in the Philippines signs"; 5