Today was an adventure. I’m using the word “adventure” as a stand in for what it really was: a clusterfuck.

Yesterday I wrote about how we avoid the upcharge of booking tours or eating meals from hotels. Today that “wisdom” bit us in the butt.

On our ride in to the hotel a couple of days ago (which we had booked through the hotel) the enterprising driver gave Nick his number and offered to give us a better rate than the hotel for our onwards journey to El Nido, which is about 5 hours away. They texted back and forth on WhatsApp and he offered us either a private ride for $135 or a shared ride for $80. The vans aren’t too big so we chose the shared ride, assuming we would share it with another couple and save $50.

We got picked up 45 minutes late and immediately I knew we had made a mistake. We got the last three seats in the back of the van. It was blasting loud music and we had no leg room, but I accepted our fate of calling it home for the next 5 hours.

45 minutes later we were dropped off on the side of the road and told to wait for another van that would take us to El Nido. We ended up waiting for 2 hours.

We were still in decent spirits despite the wait. Millie got her Friday ice cream from the little shop next door.

We used an awful toilet that I had to document. Preschool-sized bowl, no flush, no seat, no TP, no lock.

Eventually, the bus dispatcher guy came over and said “your bus is here, but there is a problem. It has cargo.” We were confused and figured that maybe the other tourists had more luggage than they had expected to carry, but no. It was truly cargo. Live chickens, two massive coolers of fresh fish, pineapples stuffed in every crevice, and who knows what else. There was also another family with two kids, a German couple, two men, and us.

The driver spent about 30 minutes doing an intense game of cargo Tetris, and tied a bunch of stuff to the roof.

They offered us three seats. One was in the back and required you hold luggage on your lap, and two were in the front: passenger seat and middle jump seat next to the driver. Nick took the backseat, I took the jump seat, and Millie got the only seat with a seatbelt. We had a brief moment of debating getting out and trying to find a private ride, but the sunk cost was too high. We were in the middle of nowhere and a man just spent 30 minutes tying our luggage to the roof.

The ride should have been an additional 4 hours but lasted 6 because we kept stopping to make deliveries. The roosters in the boxes kept cockle-doodle-dooing. Nick and I kept looking at each other and saying “what were we thinking?” and “this was not worth saving $50”. To think we could have gotten there in half the time and three times the comfort.

At one point we stopped for a bathroom break at this was outside of the bathroom.

We eventually arrived in El Nido, and then had to hop on yet another small bus to our hotel 30 minutes north of town. We had expected to meet this driver at 3 and didn’t get to him until 6:30. I texted him every hour today pushing our meeting time back 30 minutes, over and over again.

We made it, barely. We are “glamping” on the beach. The worst part about glamping is having to use the word glamping.

We had dinner at the hotel restaurant which was pretty, but we were all tired and whiny. It was a combination of a stressful day with also sitting and doing nothing all day. Lots of energy build up and no energy release. Millie watched 7 hours straight of movies in the car. It was survival mode and then we all imploded a bit at dinner.

We came back to the tent, brushed teeth, each had a bit of a breakdown, and then went to bed.