We ate breakfast, cleaned up the unit and prepared some food to take with us. Andy came to meet us at the accomodation, he organised a taxi and took us out to his place. We dropped the bags, took some photographs and chatted with Christine’s other cousin Lito. We wandered over to the tee shirt place to collect the last few shirts, including Tina’s shirt. 

The Fish farm

We then met up with Ren Ren, another of Christine’s cousins, and piled into the back of his ute. It was a covered ute with two bench seats running length ways down either side. Lito came with us and we all made our way over to Christine’s uncle’s fish farm. The fish farm was built on a mangrove swamp not far from the enormous bridge that we had traversed on the first day in Cebu City. In fact the foot print from the new bridge and associated construction was causing the water to rise in the mangrove swamp and had resulted in Christine’s uncle’s place being flooded for the last few days. Even more construction is underway to build another massive bridge. 

The feast 

Christine’s uncle’s girlfriend worked hard to cook up a sumptuous feast including fish, rice and coconuts. We drank coconut water, ate grilled fish, fresh fruit and rice, we also ate some of the food that we had brought with us. 

A martial arts lesson

While we were at the farm Christine’s uncle took us through some of his martial arts training regime. He had a tyre in a tree that he used to strengthen his knuckles. He had an old sac filled with sand suspended from another tree that he used as a punching bag. He had a stack of weapons hidden all around the camp that he could access rapidly including knives, spear fishing poles and hand guns. At one point he took out a hand gun, threw a can in the water, and popped it with a couple of shots.

Rising tide

We stayed a bit longer than expected and were nearly caught by the rising tide, thankfully we were able to take an alternative path and didn’t have to swim. I should mention that the paths and raised sections within the fish farm had all been built by hand by Christine’s uncle and her cousins. We walked back out to the main road to await the return of Ren Ren. 

10 000 Roses

Once Ren Ren made his return we loaded back into the vehicle and made our way down to the 10 000 roses display. I think we were supposed to do something else first which would have meant that we were at the 10 000 roses close to dusk. We were quite early and the 10 000 roses were not that impressive during the day. This combined with the overall tiredness of the group meant that the majority wanted to keep moving. Christine did not agree and was really looking forward to the light display. In the end, after we took a few photographs, she agreed to move on, but she was not happy about it. 

Beach side Bar 

We packed up and made our way over to a beach side suburb where Andy had sponsored some bands to play in a bar. It was lucky that we had left the 10 000 roses when we did otherwise we would have been late to the venue, the traffic had been pretty hectic. We chilled in the venue, listened to awesome music, ate some food and did some dancing. 

Back to the Airport

Once we were done we piled back into Ren Ren’s ute and returned to Andy’s place to collect our bags. We then continued on to the airport. We thanked Andy and Ren Ren for all of their help, Leito had opted to stay at Andy’s when we were there. We gave the last of our cash to Ren Ren and Andy. Ren Ren had managed to get a fine for not wearing a seatbelt. This is usually not an issue in the Philippines, however there is a good chance that the police officer had seen us westerners in the vehicle. We joined the massive queue that was going to checkin. Once we had gone through the usual checks, we had plenty of time to chill while we were waiting for the plane. Christine and I ended up sleeping on the floor while using our bags as pillows.