The island of Guimaras was is in the midst of their annual Mango festival. Being a short 20 minute ferry ride from Iloilo, I decided to venture over and rent a scooter to visit the festival and tour around the island.
A quick photo of my DL and $700 pesos is all I needed for the rental. They owner explained that while helmets are required by law, the police tend to leave light colored folk alone, I explained that our brains squish exactly the same and asked for a helmet!
The owner gave me a few tips for places to stop and off I went nerviously to Alubihod Beach for breakfast and a swim.
View from my breakfast spot. The tide was high, so little beach, but I did go swimming.
I made a few other stops at “points of interest” but they were basically Instagram photo ops and I didn’t spend much time or take any photos until I arrived back in Jordan, the main town and home for the Mango festival.
They have an “all you can eat Mango” session twice a day. It wasn’t until later in the afternoon, but I from what I could figure out, it’s a competition to see who could eat the most in 30 minutes.Mango’s for sale in all forms, fresh, dried, jellied, cakes, smoothies.The boy in the forefront meakishly approached to explain a school project they were doing to increase world peace. He said they would receive extra marks if they could video a foreigner with a world peace poster, he then went on to ask if I would be ok to hug his friend holding the poster, he then explained his friend was a guy and am I comfortable hugging a guy! I hugged the other guy with the girls and then they took this photo after we completed the video.
After about 4 hours on the island, it started to rain and the roads were pretty greasy. I chose to head back to the port and return the bike as the clouds were only getting darker. I walked back to my condo from the port which was a little sketchy through the dock area, high levels of poverty, and forklifts loading/unloading cargo onto boats.
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