Davao Days
Category: Favorite Things
At the very least, I thought I'd be sporting a tan and have my phone and camera loaded with fabulous live action durian eating pictures to show for the 5 days I was in Davao. Instead, I'm still pale (NO! to skin cancer then) and only took a few shots, as usual, that are nevertheless delightful to remember our stay with.
Davao, this time, was overcast and gorgeous and came about because of a fantastic sale on airline fare a few months back, which I thought was a waste to let pass. Imagine, a Php3999 Manila to Davao roundtrip via Cebu Pacific (it's a 1 hour and 45 minutes flight), from the usual Php9000! We (my husband, my sister and her husband) bought the tickets, picked a safe November date, and totally forgot about it. Which was why when the time finally came, we were not too harried, but only made sure we chose the right sleeping quarters which for us was the Marco Polo Hotel (which was pretty okay except for their bummer policy of not allowing pungent fruits to be brought within the premises). It was also a comfort that we had a hyper cousin who is a transplanted native and an energy dynamite that never ran out of stamina to entertain us.
Being familiar to the place, we stayed away from the usual tourist haunts but opted for the ones we missed during our previous trip. Among others, we went to the relatively new Crocodile Farm, which obviously was a frenzy of crocodile (and I hear the owners are farming them for leather) that made my husband nostalgic for his erstwhile pet that he donated to a zoo in Tagaytay some years ago when the croc got too fat. No amount of prodding, however, relaxed me to the idea of posing with a baby crocodile or albino snake cradled in my arms, so there goes another photo-op.
What I would have wanted was to get up close to one of several magnificent eagles in the Philippine Eagle Center which is a showcase for the critically endangered Pithecophaga jefferyi. These birds, they are powerful and possess ideal manly qualities of being the biggest (ahem)
, faithful (they keep one mate for life) and responsible (male eagles do most of the hunting for food for the first 40 days of an eaglet's life while the females stay with the young) that it would actually be a compliment for a man to be called eagle-like.
The people manning the center have seriously dedicated their time and effort for the cause of preserving the Philippine Eagle and there are many ways we can help out too, for those of us who have the burden. We can even Adopt-An-Eagle which I personally think is a noble way to spend 100,000Php annually (to ensure an endangered eagle's well-being, tax deductible). Unfortunately, I don't have that much extra cash but can still help in a lesser way.
One time we lunched on crabs, prawns and durian (which I requested to be included in ALL meals) while island hopping on a boat which ultimately parked off Talicud Island. There we jumped off, snorkeled and swam to the shore to pick up some shells to fill our pockets with. The overcast skies unfortunately did not get me the tan I planned on having, but nevertheless allowed for a monochromatic view of stunning corals and little fishes, which my cousin said I should have seen on a clear sunny day.
Being the lazy tourists that we were, we just cheaply succumbed to whatever our cousin had planned for itinerary, which was a lot of driving around and wonderful meals that consisted of seafood and glorious fruits (durian! marang! pomelo!). We also picked out a few malongs and other mindanaoan finery worth bringing home from Aldevinco, a touristy mall located right across our hotel, which wasn't all that bad a preoccupation, but nothing compared to the eating of durian which deserves its own post shortly.
At the very least, I thought I'd be sporting a tan and have my phone and camera loaded with fabulous live action durian eating pictures to show for the 5 days I was in Davao. Instead, I'm still pale (NO! to skin cancer then) and only took a few shots, as usual, that are nevertheless delightful to remember our stay with.
Davao, this time, was overcast and gorgeous and came about because of a fantastic sale on airline fare a few months back, which I thought was a waste to let pass. Imagine, a Php3999 Manila to Davao roundtrip via Cebu Pacific (it's a 1 hour and 45 minutes flight), from the usual Php9000! We (my husband, my sister and her husband) bought the tickets, picked a safe November date, and totally forgot about it. Which was why when the time finally came, we were not too harried, but only made sure we chose the right sleeping quarters which for us was the Marco Polo Hotel (which was pretty okay except for their bummer policy of not allowing pungent fruits to be brought within the premises). It was also a comfort that we had a hyper cousin who is a transplanted native and an energy dynamite that never ran out of stamina to entertain us.
Being familiar to the place, we stayed away from the usual tourist haunts but opted for the ones we missed during our previous trip. Among others, we went to the relatively new Crocodile Farm, which obviously was a frenzy of crocodile (and I hear the owners are farming them for leather) that made my husband nostalgic for his erstwhile pet that he donated to a zoo in Tagaytay some years ago when the croc got too fat. No amount of prodding, however, relaxed me to the idea of posing with a baby crocodile or albino snake cradled in my arms, so there goes another photo-op.
What I would have wanted was to get up close to one of several magnificent eagles in the Philippine Eagle Center which is a showcase for the critically endangered Pithecophaga jefferyi. These birds, they are powerful and possess ideal manly qualities of being the biggest (ahem), faithful (they keep one mate for life) and responsible (male eagles do most of the hunting for food for the first 40 days of an eaglet's life while the females stay with the young) that it would actually be a compliment for a man to be called eagle-like. The people manning the center have seriously dedicated their time and effort for the cause of preserving the Philippine Eagle and there are many ways we can help out too, for those of us who have the burden. We can even Adopt-An-Eagle which I personally think is a noble way to spend 100,000Php annually (to ensure an endangered eagle's well-being, tax deductible). Unfortunately, I don't have that much extra cash but can still help in a lesser way.
One time we lunched on crabs, prawns and durian (which I requested to be included in ALL meals) while island hopping on a boat which ultimately parked off Talicud Island. There we jumped off, snorkeled and swam to the shore to pick up some shells to fill our pockets with. The overcast skies unfortunately did not get me the tan I planned on having, but nevertheless allowed for a monochromatic view of stunning corals and little fishes, which my cousin said I should have seen on a clear sunny day.
Being the lazy tourists that we were, we just cheaply succumbed to whatever our cousin had planned for itinerary, which was a lot of driving around and wonderful meals that consisted of seafood and glorious fruits (durian! marang! pomelo!). We also picked out a few malongs and other mindanaoan finery worth bringing home from Aldevinco, a touristy mall located right across our hotel, which wasn't all that bad a preoccupation, but nothing compared to the eating of durian which deserves its own post shortly.
Poppycock | 11/18/2006 |
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