Yo Ho Ho A Pirate's Life for Me!

Here is the story of how Kyle came to love cruising the sea. He jumped on an early morning ferry (it was a little too far to swim) with his friends, bound for El Nido. The day was beautiful, the trip was a go. After a one hour delay by the coast guard for protocols, which included putting on life jackets for ten minutes just to appease the coast guard. The ferry left the pier with scores of people waving and saying their goodbyes, sad to see Kyle leave the island.

Instead of sitting in the benches among the other tourists, Kyle and his friends opted for sitting on the nose of the boat, by far the best seats on the vessel. The cruise through the straights, made better with a little recreational drug use, was calm and serene, the bow of the boat cutting gracefully through the sea. This was when, at some point, we all fell asleep on the shady bow. Kyle woke up about an hour later to find the sun higher in the sky and his legs quite sunburnt, which forced him to think he should get his lazy ass inside the boat and out of the sun, with the rest of the steerage.

This turned out to be quite an intelligent decision, for about fifteen minutes later the gods of the sea decided our calm ride was over, and decided to stir the pot a little. The bow heaved up and down in the waves, sending our stomachs on a vertical rampage. Kyle’s stomach might not be the greatest on buses, but it was trained and hardened for the sea by many, many years spent on the flat prairies of Alberta. While a number of Chinese tourists beside him were preparing their plastic bags to blow chunks into, Kyle sat with a shit eating grin on his face and his headphones in his ears, listening to a random score which included Steve Miller Band, Counting Crows, Black Sabbath, and Gil Scott-Heron. It was at this point Kyle proclaimed to his friend Matt (for the hundredth time that trip): I love the Philippines. Little did he know, Kyle’s humour was about to be increased at the sight of his friend Lou being completely overtaken by a wave that swept the bow, soaking her and another poor guy on the deck.

After another four hours of this, Kyle concluded that his iron stomach and love of the rough seas should be properly utilized into learning how to sail, something he will definitely do at some point in this trip. This story was written from the beautiful island of El Nido, on the porch of a kick ass bungalow on a beautiful beach that hardly cost anything for rent, while a distant typhoon turns the weather to shit.