Puerto Princesa - March 7

Puerto Princesa, Philippines March 7

This is a new port to receive cruise ships. While a few other ships have docked here, it was the maiden call for Amsterdam and there were many people on the dock to greet us. The had dancers and drummers and several hundred school children that handed out shell necklaces to all the passengers as we got off the ship. We had been told that this was a rather primitive port in that their tourism industry was just beginning and that transportation might be in 'older vehicles'. I know a number of passengers decided to cancel tours, but quite a few did them anyway. Much of this island is a National Park and a UNESCO National Heritage Site. There is an underground river that goes for miles – it is supposed to be the longest underground river in the world. One of the tours did the river but I haven't talked to anyone that went on it yet. I'm quite interested to see what they have to say about it. We decided to get a tri-cycle (trishaw, tuk tuk whatever) and just do a tour of the city. It was a perfect choice. Our driver's name was Eugene and he took us to most of the important sites. After seeing some of the city Jim asked him if there was a zoo – he said yes, 20 minutes away. A very long and bumpy 20 minutes later we arrived at the crocodile sanctuary... not exactly what we were hoping for, but we toured it anyway and then did the long, bumpy ride back to the ship. It really was a perfect half-day for us, we spent the rest of the day alternating between sitting on the balcony and in the cabin to cool off.

In this part of the world I love seeing the differences in the small boats as you move from country to country. Here they were long skinny canoe-type boats with two outriggers. Some were small; holding only one or two people and others were huge and transported 50 or so people. While the city was fairly large and had some modern buildings, much of it was made up of the tiny family-run shops or restaurants with the house behind. Along the shoreline were huge clusters of houses (shacks) - some built out over the water on stilts.

I didn't get as many photos here as I would have liked as shooting from the try-cycle was impossible and the roadways were packed with vehicles; mostly tri-cycles or jeepneys which are used as small buses. The jeepneys are stretched jeeps. Hopefully I'll get some shots of them in Manila tomorrow.