Two Weddings and A Monkey (Part 2)

Puke. There was a lot of it. Particularly from the other car. We trailed the Revo across the pretzel-loop highway leading up towards the mountains of Don Salvador Benedicto. Two cars, eleven people, two carsick little kids, ears popping in the high altitude.

Not a week after Nat tied her groom down, we were making our way to the quaint little city of Bohol to witness my only brother, Nonoy get bound up, as well. Atch was continuously wincing at the thought of his rapidly dwindling resources. I was cringing at having two excited little boys under my charge, having permanently let go of the nanny that week due to some very serious infractions.

We started out after breakfast, half a dozen adults and four kids, bracing ourselves for a two-leg four-hour road trip interspersed with a two-leg six-hour trip by sea. Taking a plane was too expensive, my father, a do-or-die skinflint declared. And Atch all so readily agreed.

Wawa and grandkids, getting ready to board the ferry

I see the sea!

Nine hours and one ferry boat ride later, we were on a highway linking Toledo to Cebu. Woog was tiredly demanding for us to turn around and go home. He was tired, he was hungry, he wanted his soft bed.

But as the brilliantly lighted hills loomed ever closer, he started bouncing up and down on his seat, “Mom, this is the best day ever!”

Cebu at night was phenomenal. As the traffic inched slowly forward, my father made an equally phenomenal leap across the seat to the luggage compartment at the back, where he emptied his sixty-something bladder mostly inside a freshly upended water bottle, splashing some of his urea on places we preferred not to think about.

We spent the night at a hotel, too hungry to be nice to one another, too tired to go around and see the sights. More family members joined us: Dada, who took an ill-timed leave from her new job (“told them I had pharyngitis”), and the next morning we drove to the airport picked up her twin, Dudu, who flew in from medical school in Iloilo (“yes, sem break at last!”).

Eli: Trade?

Woog: *snort*

We unlucky thirteen drove to the pier where we tiredly boarded another ferry after a long interminable wait under the scorching noonday sun, on towards our final destination: Tagbilaran, Bohol's capital city.

By the time we had docked at the port, it was full dark. Deedee, the lawyer sister from Manila met up with us, as well as two uncles and their wives who had travelled all the way from Kansas and San Diego. It was mayhem and chaos as we tried to fit 19 people and mountains of luggage into two cars and the hotel mini van.

In all the rush and confusion, we didn't notice that we had left behind our legal eagle. Deedee, after having successfully directed the cramming of everyone and everything into every single available space, was left standing by her lonesome on the wharf while the vehicles carrying tired and hungry people sped away. Everyone in each car all thought she was riding with the other. It somehow seemed like a portent of dark beginnings for everyone.