Camotes Island Revisited

Sorry, but this has been a crazy week and I'm late with an update. It is now summer in the Philippines. How do we know it is summer? Because the snow has melted. 

Because it just is. That and the children are out of school.

This past Sunday was filled with travel to the island of Camotes and back. Camotes has a strong branch and Sunday was their branch conference. We had a chance to travel with President and Sister Tanner who were going there to attend the conference and couldn't pass it up.

Our plan was to catch an early ferry to make the 9:00 A.M. meeting, eat some sandwiches and then return on the afternoon ferry, arriving home just after dark. That was the plan. It almost worked.

The morning ferry to Camotes is scheduled to leave at 6:30 A.M. We were taking a car which means we would normally need to be at the pier about an hour early to be able to get a ticket. This is summer, however, on a week end and Camotes Island is a very popular destination. So we were up at 3 A.M. to leave the house by 3:30 to be to the ferry terminal by 4:00 because we knew it would be a busy travel day and we needed to be in line early.

This part of the plan worked beautifully even though our wait time for the ferry was about double what it would be at a less busy time. The ride over was very relaxing. We made it to the island by about 8:30 and then drove to the meeting house arriving just after 9:00. 

Camotes Branch meeting house.

It is a very nice meeting place. The main room was packed with chairs even going down the hallway. One of the highlights of the meeting was the choir. They sang two numbers and nearly blew the roof of of the building. As a rule people here love to sing and they really put their heart into it. It was amazing.

After the meeting we had a bit of food that had been prepared by the members and also had some that we had brought along. We had time so there was no rush going back to catch the ferry. Unfortunately, the 5:30 boat was fully booked. Normally there would not be another until 9:00, but because it was a busy week end they had added another to the schedule for 7:30. We couldn't buy a ticket for it right then, but took a number and were told to come back about 6:00 to get tickets.

Come back we did, purchased our tickets, the 7:30 ferry left the dock at 8:30 and we were back home by 11:00 PM. There was quite a bit more that happened in between but time only permits the condensed version for now. The upshot is that we managed to find the location pictured above to relax for about three hours waiting for the later ferry. Almost wished there were no more ferries that day.

One last item of note before we sign off. Look closely at the picture at the top of the page and tell us how many children you see with mom and dad on the motorcycle?  Who needs a mini van?