January 2, 2009: To the Visayas

We left for the airport around 10 am to go to Tablas, the island which has the only airport in Romblon Province.  After waiting for a couple hours, during which Alma and I consumed a Cinnabon, we boarded the two-prop plane and took a short 35-minute flight to Tablas.  And I mean short - once the plane reached cruising altitude and the seat belt sign was turned off, there was basically only enough time for the flight attendant to hand out a tiny snack before she had to collect the garbage and instruct everyone to be seated for the descent.

The Tablas airport has to be the tiniest airport I've ever been through.  How tiny is it?  Well, it only has one gate - if you can even call it a gate - no X-ray machines or even metal detectors, no doors on the building, and goats in the field next to the runway, which was just basic asphalt and not very smooth.  Oh, and the pilot had to abort the first landing attempt because, as he put it, "there were two individuals walking on the runway," and he had to pull up to ensure they didn't get run over by the plane.

After landing, we had to take a pickup truck around the island to San Agustin.  The seatbelts in the car didn't work, which I wasn't exactly thrilled about - the road was only paved about a third of the time, and even where it was paved it was often messy, plus there were dogs and chickens crossing it at regular intervals.  (In the trip's saddest moment, the driver accidentally ran over a chicken while passing through one village; even worse, it was a mother hen that could have gotten out of the way on her own, but several chicks that were crossing with her were lagging behind, and she went back to try and make sure they could get across.  The more I think about this, the sadder it makes me.  Let's just move on.)

Once we got to San Agustin it turned out that windy conditions, the remnants of a typhoon passing to the south, meant that only the big ferry was able to safely make the crossing - naturally, said ferry departed at 5:30 the next morning.  So after dinner with one of Alma's cousins, we retired to a single tiny hotel room and bedded down early.  We had no reason not to - there was a brownout at 6:30, just before dinner, and another at 7:45 shortly after we returned to the hotel, so it wasn't like there was much reason to stay up.

The Tablas airport - which apparently knows itself officially as Romblon Airport.  (Because the airport isn't on Romblon Island, I'm going to keep calling it Tablas to avoid confusion.)

The control tower at Tablas.  Beyond the fence there is just farmland.

The plane we flew in on, a Dornier 328.  It wasn't nearly as bumpy as I might have feared, although I started to panic on the missed landing as I was worried that the wind was creating landing problems, until we found out it was just two dopes walking around.

Inside the "terminal."  As you can see, it was just open to the outside and had nothing but gates to remedy that.  Again, of course, when you live in a tropical climate you don't necessarily need to seal off from the outside at any point.

In the background is the ferry moored at San Agustin.  In the foreground, one of the smaller boats that wasn't allowed to sail on this day because of the conditions.  That's Romblon lurking in the background.

The port building in San Agustin.  A number of people slept in the building itself as the nearby hotels filled up quickly once it became apparent that everyone wanting to cross would have to wait for morning.

This was the "bed" I slept on in the tiny room, basically just a long wooden bench with a big pillow on top.

This is the room looking in from the door - maybe the position of the far wall can give you some idea of how small it was.  Alma and her parents all squeezed onto this one bed.

A shot of the ferry and "harbor" from the balcony of the hotel.  San Agustin's harbor has almost no natural shelter; it's basically open ocean all the way to Romblon, which explains why the conditions were too dangerous for small craft.

A panoramic view of the "harbor" from the hotel balcony.  The wind was blowing quite strongly all night and we feared that even the ferry might not be allowed out, stranding us on Tablas the entire time we were supposed to be in Romblon.  Fortunately, this didn't end up happening.

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