We had an early flight to Puerto arriving 09:30, the airport was hilarious with an full military band playing as we walked from the aircraft to the open air baggage and arrival area. The airport is small and typically tropical of impoverished parts of Philippines. Reminded me of many of the isolated airports in PNG we flew out of in the early 90's.
We were faced with a wall of hotel operators, tricycle drivers and interested bystanders as we left the "secure" baggage retrieval area where bags were arriving stacked high on a small trailer to be unloaded by a tired looking worker at a slow pace. Ken and myself were travelling light, cabin bags only but Rabbit had brought all his diving gear so we waited until he found his bags. There was a notice board with Larry and liz Nixon? displayed from Puerto Pension so we were shown to a minivan and taken to Puerto Pension, a delightful place overlooking the waterfront and coconut tree fringed bay. Puerto is the jumping off location for the world famous underwater river but as we were on a limited time frame and had to be in El Nido to catch the Tuesday ferry we had to miss it, maybe next time?
After checking in and lunch, Ken and Larry went exploring while Rabbit had the first of many post travelling massages. A highlight of our short stay in Puerto was a walk down to the waterfront board walk where we hung with the locals, drinking cold San Miguel beers at 50 cents each and snacking on fresh barbequed pork on bamboo sticks while taking in the unbelievably warm tropical nightscape. Everyone was intrigued with the 3 foreigners, particularly Rabbit, with him being so much bigger than the average fillipino and many did a double take when they saw us but also many wanted to say hello and find out where we were from.
As we had an early start the next morning, we had a quiet night with dinner at an amazing outdoor restobar finishing with a few beers on the verandah in front of Kens room drinking more SMB's from his mini bar until midnight! We all liked Puerto and were sorry we only had half a day there.
