Puerto Galera, Philippines — Traveled many miles south, sitting alone on a bus which went down roads never have I seen before. When I see the ocean, I'll know I would be close, I would tell myself. And so I waited. Dozed off a bit, and then waited some more. After an hour or so, we came to an elevated road, and there it was. A few kilometers away, I could see a pristine vast of blue stretched ahead. My heart fluttered at the sight of it. It's funny because I'm a terrible swimmer, but I love the sea anyway.
I hopped on an hour-long ride on a boat to get to the island. This boat broke down exactly at half-hour, which meant I was stuck in the middle of the ocean. Took a long while to fix. Tried to suppress the boat-sinking horror stories unfolding in my head. After another hour, I finally reached the island. But then I got lost. I found our room, but then I got locked out. I was dehydrated and exteremely hungry. Eventually, I found out that the inn-keeper was mistaken; I had been knocking on the wrong door the whole time. My friend found me. I got in. But due to some act of dull-wittedness, burned a part of my hair.
"We need to turn this day around," I told my friend who went through even worse, an unimaginable fiasco, just to get there.
And so we did.
We took a stroll along the beach. Talked. We found consolation in each other's misery. We found a nice spot by a quieter end of the shore and settled there, feet buried in the sand. The sky was growing faint. Yellow was becoming orange, orange into purple, purple into blue. We sat there waiting, watching as our worries faded away—just like the daylight—into a sunset we knew we would never forget.
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