Woke up this morning to the sound of the alarm on my wrist watch. Rather surprised that it woke me up. Was just finishing my shower when Joel knocked on my door, which was supposed to be my wakeup call. I answered the door and told him to give me a few minutes and I would be over. I finished dressing packed my things up, went down stairs and paid our tab off, and went back up to Joel’s room. Seeing that that Joel and the Driver were both ready, we finalized what we thought our plans for the day would be. We had planed to drive to Samar, a near Island with a connecting bridge, reportedly the longest bridge in the Philippines. There we had planed to visit one or two of the caves that inhabit the island, spending perhaps an hour or less at each one. This didn’t exactly happen. We ended up leaving the hotel at about 8:45, getting some breakfast, and gas which put us on the road at about 10:00. It then took an hour to get to Samar. Thinking that this should be no problem it being 11:00 now we can visit one of the caves, catch lunch in town and be on our way to the next destination. When we got to the town of Basey, Joel asked one of the locals where to go to find the cave. The local gentleman told him that he needed to talk to the director of the department of tourism in Samar if we wanted to visit the cave. So ok no problem where do we find him. The most likely place they say is at the city government building. So we go there, but of course the director isn’t there, we are informed that he is at the sports center, an area maintained by the town that basically has a couple of basketball courts covered by tin roofs. There are a number of games going on and several people. Joel finally locates the gentleman and he tells us no problem he will set it up so we can see the caves, but he needs a ride to his office. Well sure being as we have to go to his office, we may as well give him a ride. Once at his office he begins setting up a boat rental and driver, and cave guide. We are a bit confused, we expected a cave guide, but why a boat and driver, why cant we just drive to the cave. The tourism director explains that while the Island has over 400 caves that they are only promoting and using 4 of them and these four are only accessible by boat, and the closet cave we can go to is a little over an hour away. Well we didn’t come all this way for nothing we are going to see a cave. The Director then tells us that most people arrive much earlier in the morning so that they can have time to see more than one cave, but because it’s already so late that we will only see the first one. I agree to the arrangements, and we are soon not on our way, but into town to buy some food for lunch, so that we wont be starved by the time we get back. We finally set off I think about 11:45 and it takes us a little over an hour to get to the cave. We then take a short walk along a stone path to the cave entrance. Before going in we eat our lunch, and share some of food with the tour guide and boat driver, and the “lantern boy”. Our tour begins at one entrance to the cave, our tour guide telling us about cave formation and all the typical rhetoric about billions of years it takes for them to form. we proceeded in by foot, the whole deal turns out to be a walking cave, which is a good thing because none of us had planed on climbing or crawling. There were no flash lights or extra lighting of any sort, the lantern boy simply had Coleman style white fuel lantern that he carried above his head and lighted the way for all of us. The guide gave us direction as to where to go, and showed us neat features of the cave such as formations of stalactites that when taped made reverberating sounds at different frequencies depending on which stalactite you taped. As the tour continued the guide continued to point out neat features and I continued to snap pictures of nearly everything. It took us a little over an hour to complete the tour of the cave and we exited through a different entrance to the cave. It was a short walk to the boat and then the trip by boat back to the town and our van. By the time all was said and done it was a little after four, and we all know that the only thing we would do for the rest of the day would be to get to the next town of Ormoc where the next days attractions would be and get a hotel. It took us nearly three hours to get to Ormoc, not that it is that great of a distance, but that; that is simply the way it goes on these roads. We got something to eat and found a hotel and settled in for the night. I wasn’t planning on doing to much of anything and just went to bed, or attempted to. Shortly after we checked in the karaoke bar that we didn’t know about located about two feet behind our hotel decided to open. While I can’t vouch for Joel or the van driver, I can certainly say that the bump bump bump of the base kept me awake until after midnight. Eventually I fell asleep and sometime during the night the bump bump bump ceased and then all was right with the world again.