We woke up just before five, got our gear and headed off to the dive shop with flashlights in the night. It was quite windy though and well there we found our suspicions to be true. The dive was cancelled due to rough sea. Bah. The question now was whether we should extend our stay or not.

After checking with the dive shop we decided to give it another day. The sun appeared out of the blue (pun intended) for half an hour but was then replaced by grey clouds, I guess weather forecasts don’t help much either. We bumped into Karin, the girl of the swedish couple, and agreed we would have dinner together later, it would be nice with some additional company.

In general I guess a week of lame weather isn’t the end of the world for us but I can imagine that the owner of the newly opened resort ponders whether this weather is just temporarily or if climate and weather really have change for the worse. The whole idea with diving and beaches is rather dependent on nice weather and tourists may prefer Malaysia, Honduras or other places if the Philippines starts to get associated with so-so weather…

We walked along Bounty Beach despite the weather and walking with sandals in hand feeling the waves tickle ones feet one almost got the illusion that weather was perfect. Children were playing and cheering and seem oblivious to the grey skies and we found their their trouble-free attitude to be rather contagious. We got back in time for a decent sunset and decided we’d try to book tickets to Puerto Princessa before dinner.
The attempts to book with Cebu Pacific online were of course in vain. After some cursing over the internet connection and waiting we found out that that the website refused our credit cards for some unknown reason. The other Swedish couple had themselves managed to book only after their forth of fifth attempt and could not tell why the last attempt was successful and the others had failed. We would get to Palawan some day, inshallah.

The dinner was nice, we exchanged tales of drilling, handymen and travel while enjoying a seafood curry at Hippocampus. We said our goodbyes rather early though since the thresher shark dive was scheduled for early morning again.