Motorcycle

About halfway through our vacation, Walter and I found ourselves at a pretty terrible resort: the mosquitoes terrorized us constantly, the water was too shallow and full of wildlife to swim in, and there were daily "brown-outs" (a planned power-outage because work is being done on the lines somewhere). Our first day there was miserable and boring, so when the power went out again the second day we decided to take matters into our own hands and rent a motorbike for the day.Motorbikes are definitely the vehicle of choice in the Philippines. People use them to carry multiple people around, transport goods, and attach them to carts to make "trikes", which are the nearest approximation to taxis most towns have. 

Despite the apparent lack of road rules (other than "always honk when passing") and the fact that roads can vary from paved to gravel to "under deep excavation" within a single kilometer, traffic feels surprisingly safe. Because I actually have a motorcycle license in the States and because no one laughed at the idea of two American-sized people riding one one motorbike, we decided I would drive and Walter would ride behind me.

Pause for road construction

Map in hand we took off and encountered our first problem: I couldn't figure out how to up-shift. On every motorcycle I have ever driven you step down to down-shift and pull up to up-shift. Not this time. When I pulled up I down-shifted and when I stepped down nothing happened. No problem, we just got used to shifting from 2nd to 3rd by down-shifting (2nd to 1st to neutral to 4th to 3rd). This, of course, is a terribly rough way to drive, but I couldn't figure out any other way.

For the next hour or so we motored along a coastal road at a speedy 40 km/hr (25mph), taking in the sights. We passed rice paddies, cows and goats tied alongside the road, dogs sleeping in the street, schoolchildren taking lunchtime walks, and a lot of people escaping the heat in shaded sitting areas. Many of the people we passed waved and yelled "hello!", some stared in wonder at two white people on a motorbike, and quite a few pointed and laughed when they realized the woman was driving the man around.Eventually we got to the one turn we had to make to get to a waterfall we wanted to see. The turn immediately turned into a steep hill so, being the skilled motorist that I am, I down-shifted and the motorbike immediately stalled to a stop. We both hopped off the bike and very carefully rolled it back down the hill to a closed-down gas station. After our failure the first time with the hill, I was certain that trying again would lead to almost-certain death. Walter, however, was less convinced because he claimed that I was in 4th gear when we idled, not 2nd as I had assumed. I declared him a liar because I had been completely unable to up-shift the whole trip, so how did I possibly do it mid-hill? After some mild bickering I hopped on the bike to turn it around (still totally unwilling to try the hill again) and miraculously discovered how to up-shift. Brilliant! I reluctantly admitted that maybe he was right about the 4th gear thing and maybe the hill wasn't going to kill us. With just a little bit of difficulty and a lot of cursing from me (and, subsequently, laughter from the passing Philippinoes...) we got to the top of the hill in one piece. We wound around and found the place to park for the waterfall and headed down the steep stone staircase to check it out. Walter had slightly burned his leg on the exhaust pipe when he got off the motorcycle, so he quickly hopped in the water...with the map still in his pocket. We fished it out and tried to unfold it, but mostly we just tore it to shreds. Oh well, we'd figure it out later. The waterfall was beautiful and it felt good to sit in the shade, so we hung out at the river's edge for quite a while. Eventually we climbed back up the stairs, paid our 5 pesos for parking (~US$.10) and headed off to the city for lunch in an internet cafe.

Me at the falls

The parking people told us the two ways to get to the city from the falls; one included winding through the mountains and one was basically back-tracking the same way we had come and then going a little further. We figured the drive there was relatively easy and familiar so it was probably a better option than the presumably steep and curvy mountain paths.
As we made our way back along the coastline road I started to notice that the back-end was handling funny and fish-tailing a little bit. We were in a construction zone on a dirt road, but it was getting more and more out of control as we drove. Even though neither of us know a thing about motorcycle maintenance, we decided to pull over and see if we could figure it out. Luckily for us the problem was very easy: the back tire was completely flat. Unluckily for us we had no idea how to fix this problem and we had zero cellphone reception.

We managed to get ahold of the resort but knew it would take them a while to get to us, so as I sat and read on a dirt mound Walter headed off to see if there was a vulcanizing shop nearby. A few minutes later he returned on the back of a motorbike being driven by a small Philippino man. The man knew of a nearby repair shop, so he helped us walk the kilometer or so to a house with a greasy garage behind it. In the garage (which smelled of burnt rubber and motor oil) there were a couple men working on another bike's tire with an open flame. Chickens, roosters, and a couple of well-fed but mangy puppys wandered around the working men and me on my plastic stool. Another dog slept in the shade nearby and a couple of women came and went, performing household chores. We waited there in the shade for about an hour before our bike was fixed, and we were pleasantly surprised to only pay 50 pesos (~US$1) for the repair.

Our broken-down bike

About 20 minutes later we were going through a construction zone and saw that our path was blocked by a couple of big trucks. I slowed to a stop to wait for them to finish, but the construction workers waved me through a small path between the first truck and a pile of dirt. We easily slipped through, but I did not see how we would slip through the next path without getting off the bike and walking it. What happened next I cannot explain; as I tried to slow to a stop the back tire continued revving until I completely lost control and the bike went down. Luckily the fairly light bike mostly went down one my left leg (in pants) rather than Walter's bare legs. As the construction crew ran over to pick up the bike and I inspected myself for injuries I heard the bike loudly rev again. I looked up to see the bike hopping on it's back tire with Walter wildly trying to hold onto it. As he tried to help the other men pick up the bike, he had unknowingly grabbed the throttle and was giving it a lot of gas. "LET GO!" I screamed as the other men yelled and got out of the way. Walter let go and ran out from under the bike as it finally came to a rest on the concrete.

The men picked up the bike again and quickly set to work pounding things back into place. At this point Walter realized he had burned his leg pretty badly on the radiator so he took off to the nearby water to dunk his very painful injury. After the men had fixed as much as they could, I was handed the very broken tail-light and was told "You can never use this again" as they pointed to the kickstand.
At this point we were both very shaken, but we wanted to get the bike fixed as much as possible on our own before returning it to the resort because we figured it would be cheaper that way. We very slowly made our way to the next town and the nearest repair shop.
I must have been quite a sight as we pulled up because everyone immediately stopped what they were doing and stared at the tall, dirt-covered, sunburnt white woman entering their shop. I explained that we had taken a spill and needed a new tail-light, but they quickly informed me that they didn't have any in stock. When I asked them to look at the kickstand, I was met with blank stares. "Kick start?" someone asked. "No, kickstand," I repeated while pointing to one of their bikes. Blank stares. "Ooooh, side stand!" they corrected me in unison. "Yes, side stand. Can you fix it?" The agreed to look at it and after about 15 minutes and 50 pesos it was repaired and we were on our way.
At this point Walter wanted to go to a pharmacia, but it was another 10 kilometers drive and my nerves were completely shot so I insisted that we return to the resort. Sunburnt, hungry, sore, dirty, and exhausted we returned to our room and collapsed into bed. As we lay there, drinking a beer in front of the fan, we agreed that this was going to be one of those days we'd remember for a long, long time. And while we didn't want to say it wasn't miserable, it was certainly anything but boring.