Day 2 in Coron

Aerial view of the islands

Walking to the farm

Our second day was more or less a land-locked adventure. Not that it detracted from all the beautiful scenery of Palawan. Most of us are familiar with the geography of Palawan looking like a long strip of land obliquely lying on the west side opposite Batangas and Mindoro. But apparently, the northern tip of the land has some amazing terrain as we found out when we went to the farm of our friend.

Look who's having fun...

Ripe for the picking

Lebquen is situated on a hilly area that lies midway between the town of Coron and Busuanga airport. It's a stretch off the main road and once we left the main highway, the road network was a patchwork of paved and dirt roads. After passing through privately owned haciendas we eventually got to an area where there was a river running through. One gate after another was opened by the ranch hand and finally... Lebquen!

Grandma's home

I forgot to ask who named the place and what the history behind it was. That story might come a little later. Suffice it to say that the land went on and on for miles around framed by brown hills parched by too much sun and huge stately trees of Philippine hardwood, mangoes, cashew and acacia. And then some...

Mangoes galore

Lia and Sarita were checking out the construction of a cow chute for their livestock. It is, after all, a working farm! So as we tagged along we went walking around the property up to the water source on a hillside that was lush with all sorts of flora. No fauna at this point except for a squirrel and some of the roosters they owned, a few dogs and some wild crows. 

Cow chute

Rooster

It's a wonder how Sarita's grandmother lived in an area that was so remote i.e., to this day, no mobile signal. She lived off the land on her own until she passed away. It is just so isolated from the outside world that very few human contacts would have transpired while she was living there. The next door neighbors would be the farm owned by the Yulo family miles down the dirt road.

We spent the entire morning on the farm having the ranch hands gather star apples, cashew and mangoes right from the trees. Then to my surprise, there was a lady peddling suman (sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves and steamed). I didn't have much of it after a hearty breakfast of danggit lamayo, red tomatoes and fried rice... and steaming hot coffee... We bought the entire basket of suman and I'm sure the lady was relieved that her wares were all sold that morning.

Ripe Cashew fruit and the nuts

It was back to the house for lunch and what greeted us was a delicate pasta marinara with huge prawns and fresh seafood. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it! we were more or less free for the afternoon. Still amid peals of laughter, we spent the afternoon chatting and napping and chatting some more. We walked to town as the afternoon cooled down and had some drinks near the pier. The sunset was just glorious! I took a picture just as the sun was going down and a sliver of the new moon was rising. Twilight and dusk captured in one shot!

Pasta anyone?

Cheese sticks

Can't get it to rotate. twilight and sunset

Dinner was at Bistro Coron along the main highway. We were there a little early as the place gets really busy at night and the orders are a little slow as they prepare the food per order. But the wait is all worth it. We had Salad Nicoise and Pizza. and when the orders arrived, i was aghast that the pizza was an entire tray! So much for watching what I eat! We dove into the meal and relished every morsel. 

Salad Nicoise

Pizza!