Of crocs and mismatched slippers, Of butterflies and barefoot dinners

With my non-refundable promo ticket to Puerto Princesa bought more than four months ago, I hurriedly pack my bag with the reminder: There’s nothing to feel guilty about taking this break. The world will continue to spin without me sitting on my old rose swivel chair, frantically checking pages and pages of typeset manuscripts. And so, off to Palawan I go with my ever-efficient, equally-adventurous and French-speaking friend Jenny. Here’s a slice of my four-day, August 12-15, Palawan life:

Who says an animal needs to growl or hiss to generate fear among humans? You don’t get to have 3,000 teeth in your whole lifetime (30-40 at a time; they constantly grow their biters) and weigh hundreds of pounds for nothing! Meet the croc. Did you know that they can live up to a 100 years and weigh up to one ton? And that they can open their jaws, stay in that position, and not move an inch for an hour? At the crocodile farm, or more specifically, the Palawan Wildlife Rescue and Conservation Center, I realize that my worst nightmare is falling off the steel bars that separate me from the tens of crocodiles underneath. Fed only twice a week, a hunch tells me they would be happy to chew a morsel of Manila meat. I guess I’d have to tell them the truth: “But I don’t taste like chicken!”

Who says slippers need to match? I enter our room in the city apartelle and I wonder out loud to Jenny, “Why aren’t the left and the right the same color?” Sure, they’re the same size (way too big for my size 5 ½ feet) and proved useful in the shower but is this pair a reflection of the establishment’s sales figures? Couldn’t afford to buy new pairs to offer to guests? For three days the question danced in my head only to be halted by this hypothesis: The management didn’t want guests to be taking home these slippers as souvenir items. What a smart, anti-theft idea! Who in his right mind would walk around wearing these slippers outside the shower?

Butterflies live for only two weeks. This is just one of the few new things I’ve learned about these winged creatures when we visited the Butterfly Farm. Of course, we all know about me-ta-mor-pho-sis; how an ugly caterpillar turns into beautiful butterflies. But nothing beats learning the science lesson up close by actually seeing dozens of butterflies fluttering their wings, as if beckoning admirers to follow them. I don’t need a pendulum to be hypnotized; the beauty of God’s creation can do the trick.

Save the best (dinner) for last. Dining is not just about good food; it’s also about the whole sensory experience. A short tricycle ride away from where we were staying is Kalui’s, a seafood restaurant highly recommended by the locals. At the entrance, a receptionist gives me a cylindrical wooden block with a number and instructs us (with Dr. Zayda, a dentist/churchmate of Jenny) to take off our footwear. He then proceeds to store them in a wooden pull-out box and guides us to our reserved table. The walls of the restaurant are adorned with paintings and from its ceilings hang decorative fabrics in the shape of fish, among others. For dessert, they serve us complimentary slices of fruits on a half-coconut shell. What about Kalui’s isn’t great? Just one: the fact that they don’t have a branch in Manila.

At the beginning of our trip, I almost believed that we were experiencing the reality of Murphy’s Law: “If anything can go wrong, it will.” So, okay, we might have had endure a four-hour bumpy ride to and from Sabang for nothing and postpone our underground river tour booking due to harsh weather, but then who decides that Murphy will always have the last say? God might have allowed the sky to rain on our parade, er, vacation but by His grace, He still enabled us to see the good in everything. You see, every good and perfect gift comes from Above. Some of these perfect gifts just come in unusual packages.