Beach Day in Tinambac

Last week, Hunter and I had been scheming for a couple days about how we could arrange a nice beach day for ourselves, since there aren't any in our area.  Luckily, we have a fellow CRM Volunteer fairly close to us in Tinambac!  Russ was kind enough to invite us to his town and he and his host father cooked up a great lunch for us!  

The HUMONGOUS mama pig in Russ' backyard, and the "guard dog"

And all the piglets!  New pet?!

We loaded up Russ' host father's bangka (he's a local fisherman) with all the food and some friends and we headed out into San Miguel Bay!  We rode around a little bit and decided on a beach that looked promising.  

After we unloaded all of our stuff, a couple of the men started a fire and began to cook a few fish (bangus) they had brought along.

Getting ready to climb up the hill to grab us some fresh coconuts!

Beautiful!

This little passage was ALL broken shells!

Inside our bangka

One of our new friends climbing the coconut tree to get some fresh coconut juice for us!

This, we affectionately refer to as the "gargoyle" stance.  Basically every Filipino can do this for hours... me? About 30 seconds.

Me and Hunter

Trying the fresh coconut juice! Sooo good and sweet!!

Hunter and I have to ask ourselves a lot, "Is this real life?  Are we really in the Peace Corps??"

Grabbing some rice.  The whole pot was FULL of rice... there were only  7 of us...

Russ and Hunter on the bangka

On our bangka ride back!

Such a great day!  Apparently Russ' host father and his friends had such a good time with us that they're already planning our next outing!  We're OK with it! :)