Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away…

I can’t think of a better way to start the day than to wake up next to a sweet young brown-skinned woman. And that’s how I started mine! Then things took a turn for the better. Pearl wanted to know if I was going to do the Friday group hike and I asked if she had something else in mind. She did, suggesting we do our hike together in San Antonio, about 35K away in Zambales province.

Pearl said she knew of a resort there with hiking trails and she had always wanted to see what it was like. Sounds like a plan! We walked the dogs together, then headed down to the highway. Pearl didn’t have her hiking shoes with her, so she called her mother and asked her to meet us at Waltermart in Subic town. We caught a Jeepney and were on our way. Once she had her shoes we went back out on the highway to catch a bus. The way it works here is you stand on the side of the road and when you see a bus coming you wave it down. Provided there are seats available, the driver will pull over and pick you up. We didn’t have to wait long before we were aboard a nice air-conditioned bus destined to pass through San Antonio. Fare was 40 pesos each.

Because of traffic and frequent stops to pick up passengers, it took us about 45 minutes to reach our destination city. I’d been here a couple of times but was clueless as to where to go next. Luckily, Pearl knew her way around a lot better than me. We hailed a trike and Pearl asked the driver to take us to a restaurant she liked for breakfast. It seemed like we did a lot of driving around on backstreets before pulling up to a building with a “closed” sign on the door. Oh well. Pearl said we could eat at the resort, so off we went. It was a pretty good way out of town, but then things started looking oddly familiar. We were on the road to Pundaquit, an area where we had done a couple of Hashes back in the good ol’ days. We crossed the rickety old river bridge I remembered and shortly thereafter arrived at the Stonehill Farm and Resort.

Once we were back down and had exited the resort, we stood on the road and waited for an empty trike to pass by. I decided to start walking towards Pundaquit (poon-dock-it) to get my bearings straight. Soon enough I saw the road to Monty’s resort where we had done the Hash a couple of years ago. I knew there was a bar/restaurant I liked not much further away and then a trike arrived so we had him take us. “To the Gas Station”, I announced, and off we went. We kept going and going and I’m thinking, damn, I don’t remember it being this far. Finally, the trike pulled over and stopped at an abandoned gas station. I said, “no, no. This is not where I meant. The Gas Station is a restaurant!” He shook his head and shrugged. “Never mind, just take us back to San Antonio.” As we were driving I remembered a key detail–it’s not called The Gas Station. The name is Car Wash. Once I said those magic words the driver immediately knew what I was talking about.

After lunch, we caught a trike back to San Antonio and a bus pulled up almost immediately after we arrived. This one wasn’t airconditioned but it was breezy and comfortable. I got home in plenty of time to shower up and head out to the darts tourney.

Today has not been nearly as nice. But I’ll worry about that tomorrow.