Sunken ship and a change of plans
This is actually kind of late to get posted, because it happened right after Christmas while Jared was visiting, but we just realized that we had forgotten to post this, so I'm remedying that now.
Most of the plans that we made for Jared's visit fell through because it started raining in early December and just didn't stop for the rest of the month. Every time we put an address into the GPS, it would throw up a blurb stating: "Your route may be effected by general flood advisory: Extreme!"
Our big excursion with Jared had been to go to the Pinipisakan Falls and Sulpan caves. A two-day excursion where you hike through the jungle and up a river to some falls coming out of a cave then go spelunking in the cave.
A week before we were supposed to go, we got a phone call from our guide saying that with the river above flood level, it just was not safe, but he had some alternative caves that we could go hiking that would not be affected by the flood waters. He did say that they would watch and if they went a couple days without rain, and the water level dropped, we might still be able to make it.
Well we did have a couple days with only a few hours of rain, so as we were on the transport up to Catbalogan, he called sayin his local guides had been up the river and it should be safe to go with our original plans. Yay! We were so excited.
The next morning we got up at 4 to be to the tour on time. We headed to the river a couple of towns away. There we got into a long wooden canoe with all our gear.
The scenery was gorgeous—lots of green trees, the flowing river, people out on their wooden boats.
Then the rain started. At one point, the engine of the boat stopped as we are going through a curve in the river where it narrowed.. With no engine, the current caught the front of the boat and turned it sideways, so it was pointed across the river instead of with it. Then it snagged on something in the water and water started to come into the canoe. A second later, the boat was filled and going down.
Yeah, as the water started rising in the boat, Leiana turned to grab our two backpacks which were seated behind her. Luckily the boat had drifted closer to the bank. I was swept downstream towards a tree which had fallen over. Leiana and Jared were swept out of the boat and made it to an uprooted tree in the river.
Jared had grabbed the big purple pack that was in front of him. Jack stayed with the boat and made it to shore, grabbing the fuel as it floated in front of him [I figured if we had a gallon of fuel in the front of the boat, we might need that when we got the boat out of the water again]. He also grabbed some other items and 3 flip-flops [two of them even matched--never saw the mate to that odd one though]. Jack was noticing that the sandy river bank he was standing on had numerous cracks in it and looked ready to go into the river at any time Jack was seriously questioning the safety of being on shore.
Did we mention it had started raining again? Jared noticed that the level of the river was rising--swiftly, he having to switch from the branch he was on to the one I was on as water was creeping up his limb. As other boaters passed us, they dropped off some of our stuff that had floated down the river to the opposite shore. I loved to see how helpful everyone was.
Some of the people coming downstream would wave to us. It was sort of pleasant to sit there with all the world floating by. Did we mention it was still raining as well? At least it was warm. After a while, a rescue boat came. [Rescue boat here is a boat just like the submerged boat that was being piloted by some of their friends.] Jared and Leiana had moved to the shore by this point, swimming across the small channel between us and the shore.
We finally got on some other boats and continued heading upstream for a few more minutes, before the guide finally called a halt and said with the continuing rain and rising waters, it just was not safe to continue. We headed back to our starting point and got a tour of some other smaller falls in the local area.
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