Monkeys and St. James

Monkeys and St. James don't really have anything in common except that I have been wanting to share my monkey adventures and the town fiesta of our patron saint, James.

What do you think of this photo? Most windows, especially on the second floor, have metal grills on them to prevent people and stuff from falling out, remember most folks do not have screens. This little guy was having fun and I had to take his photo.

I also have been wanting to share where we eat merienda daily and lunch, this is the inside of our canteen at school.



At the end of June I traveled to another group of islands on the north part of Palawan. The main town is called Coron, the small island where I stayed is called Sangat Island. It was a piece of Eden, paradise, in an absolutely magical place. I haven't been that calm and relaxed in years! No roosters, no jeepneys, no tricycles, no loud church speakers.....gentle waves, gorgeous water, lush surroundings, and oh yes, the monkeys!!!

The small plane landed in a pasture surrounded by cows

The island staff picked us up, Coron has different shaped tricycles

The boat that took us to Sangat Island

My own little Nipa Hut, it was awesome!

View from top of Cullion Island

What do you think of the old cures??

Children separated from their leper parents

Monkey

More beach at Sangat

The beach at Sangat, the walkway in the distance curves around the mountain to another gorgeous beach.

My nipa hut had a bed with mosquito net and spacious CR (bathroom) - big windows opened up to the beach. Honestly, it was so nice there I didn't want to leave. The staff are great, food was delicious, snorkeling trips really spectacular....like I said, it was a little piece of Eden.

We took a day trip to another island where there used to be a leper colony, very interesting. Lepers from all over the Philippines were required to go to this island and live, eventually lepers were allowed to marry and have children but the children were kept away from the parents. The museum was so so very interesting, a cure was eventually found and the colony was closed.

Sorry that the photos are a bit mixed up, they seem to jump around and have a life of their own.

Okay so now the monkeys, when we first got to Sangat everyone kept talking about the monkeys. Two days went by and still no monkeys.....the owner even joked and called "Hey, let the monkeys out now so Amy can see them....."

Finally they arrived and I saw them. They sat in the coconut trees and used their powerful teeth to break open the buko (new baby coconuts) and scoop out the coconut meat with their hands, so interesting to watch. They jumped from tree to tree just like in the movies, babies too.



I love the above photo......Sangat Island has a website if you want to check it out....I can't wait to go back.
There are salt water pearl farms all throughout this part of Palawan, we went by many in the boats. The oysters are in small cage like things at the bottom of a cable and a float. Workers from neighboring islands go to a barge type thing and shuck oysters and gather pearls, we were told the farms are owned by Japanese and the pearls shipped there. I did not buy any but plan to. These are called natural pearls as opposed to the freshwater ones, which are considered cultured pearls. To me a pearl is a pearl.....
Will have to share about the St. James fiesta in the next blog. There were at least 42 statues of St.James on the horse in the procession....I took pictures of them all.