San Augustin (By Default)

Day 1 – Very Hidden Sea!!

Having had enough of Mad Mikaela we decided that we were going to move on today and had read about a place named the Hidden Sea which sounded like a massive lagoon that you accessed through a cliff face so we thought we would head for it.

After breakfast I asked Mikaela if I could organise a car to drive us to Calatrava (The nearest town) which she said she could and about an hour later a Italian guy named Jack turned up to discuss this with me.

The car was going to be quite expensive and we had to sort out a hotel for the night, the only one on the hidden sea was a place named Paksi Cove.  Unfortunately this was not on bookings.com and the phone number was unobtainable (apparently the general consensus was that it had been sold recently).

Eventually Shell and I decided that we would get the car to Calatrava and try and see (with the help of Jack) if we could book the hotel from there as presumably there would be some local knowledge about it there.

So around midday we headed off, stopping briefly in Odiongan to pick up cash from an ATM, the journey was a scenic 2-3 hour drive before we arrived in Calatrava.  Once we were there Jack drove to the port to find out if there was anyone that knew a number or a contact for Paksi Cove Hotel and after a while he came back empty handed, the only option was we could get a boat there to see if it the hotel was open.  So before that we stopped and had a cigarette whilst Jack went around the small town to find out if he could obtain any information regarding the hotel, which he couldn’t.

In the end as time was getting on and we knew we had another journey to get to the boat port for early the next day we made an executive decision to leave the hidden sea hidden and asked Jack to drive us to the port town of St. Augustin so we were there for the next morning.

 

Another hour or two later we arrived in the ‘smoke free’ town  (no smoking allowed) of St. Augustin and after checking out two ropey hotels we checked into the better of the two (just!).

We then went for a walk to the port and found a place on the waterfront where we could get a drink (check out Shell's new Mikaela Sunglasses below!!).  After this we had a walk around the small town (a one horse affair again) looking for something to eat, however there seemed to be no restaurants here and the food stalls that we were directed to did not look that appetising or hygienic. 

 

So in the end after wandering around aimlessly we opted to get some crisps from a shop and two cakes from a stall and return to our room.  We ate our ‘dinner’ and watched some downloaded TV on our laptop before having an early night.