PhiTac: 12 February 2000

Okay. Where to start? I have so much to write about. These past few days have been somewhat adventurous. I'll start with Tuesday night (Feb. 8). Elder Wetenkamp and I decided to leave that night on the 10:00 bus. As we were getting on the bus at the terminal, they were changing a flat tire (#1). Then we left, cruisin' down the highway no problems. Then in barangay (closest English word is probably subdivision) Bagas in Borongan, pop! Two flat tires (#2 and #3). Okay. Not too fun, but no big deal. 30 to 45 minutes later, we're on our way again. About two minutes down the road, pop! Flat tire (#4). Okay, this is a problem. There aren't any more spare tires. "Well, what did you do?" you're probably asking yourself. Good question. The driver and maintenance crew sprawled out on the empty benches (there weren't many passengers at this point) and told us to do the same. It was 3:00 in the morning, so we didn't have much choice. We slept on the bus right there on the side of the road. It was a terrible sleep. I woke up right before 6:00 and decided to just sit up and hang around. Elder Wetenkamp did the same, so I at least had someone to talk with. Someone caught a tricycle back to Borongan to get a new tire. He returned around 8:00, and they changed the tire. We were moving again sometime between 8:30 and 9:00. We were very relieved to be on our way again. Somewhere in Sulat or Taft, we got another flat tire (#5). This time, the driver managed to limp up to a vulcanizing shop. They fixed one of the flat tires and stuck it on while we waited for an hour in the hot bus. Once we were rolling again, we got to Tacloban without any further problems. We arrived at our destination at 2:00 in the afternoon, 16 hours after we left Guiuan. We felt pretty cool being able to tell everyone how long it took us to travel.

But that was nothing.

Elder Wetenkamp met up with Elder Jones, and I met up with Elder Culbertson. He's a pretty cool guy. We hung out with Elder Jackson and Elder Welsh. Had some R&R in Tacloban. Elder Swingler was being transferred to Maasin, so I hung out with him some. I love that guy.

Thursday morning. Elder Jackson, Elder Welsh (new ZL), Elder Culbertson, and I went to the terminal and caught a bus headed for Borongan. It was raining. Had been since before we arrived in Tacloban. Culbertson enjoyed crossing the San Juanico Bridge for the first time. We were having a good time getting acquainted on the bus. Then, about one hour after crossing the bridge, we ran into a traffic jam. The problem: a section of the road was flooded. Some buses were brave and went across. They made it. A lot of people were in vehicles that weren't high enough to make it, so they were screwed. After about an hour of observing, our driver built up the nerve to cross. And we made it fine. We were happy. The obstacle was crossed. We anticipated smooth driving all the way to Borongan. As we made our way east through the middle of Samar, we encountered more flooding. No big deal. It was only about one foot deep. There were a couple of landslides along the road. It was a little alarming to see the instability of the roadside hills, but the slides were far from impassable, so it didn't hinder our journey. On one section of road, we were driving uphill as water rushed down the side of a mountain, and down the road we were on. We were driving up a foot-deep river. But it couldn't stop us. When we were almost to Taft, we entered a flooded town. The water was two feet deep. Our bus got through it with no trouble. But then, about half a kilometer down the road, we hit another traffic jam. It was another flood. This time, our driver decided that he wouldn't try to cross it. And for good reason. There were a bunch of small boats charging people to cross to the other side, which we couldn't see because the road curved. The four of us decide to cross to see what the situation was on the other side. We got in the wobbly boat with no seats and knelt in the inch of water in the bottom from the rain, and started down the flooded road. As we rounded the curve, we saw an empty bus that had tried to cross, but didn't make it because it was too deep. There were a bunch of guys trying to push it out. The water was up to their necks. We got to the other side and saw that the situation was the same. There were no buses or jeepneys to take us the rest of the way. There was, however, a tricycle. Elders Jackson and Welsh got on the trike and rode on to see what lay ahead, while Elder Culbertson and I returned to the other side of the flood to watch our stuff. We waited for a couple of hours, just talking and getting know each other. After a while, we decided to toss my new football around in the street. After about five minutes of that, we heard and saw a huge vehicle coming from the direction of the flood. I couldn't see any details because it was dusk and I wasn't wearing glasses, but we heard Elders Jackson and Welsh yelling, "Get the stuff!" So we got all of the luggage out of our stranded bus. I was a little surprised as I helped carry it to the vehicle. It was a big army truck. We jumped onto the high bed with armed soldiers and made our way to Catbalogan (that's where the truck's destination was) in the dark. Remember higher up this page where I said we were "driving uphill as water rushed down the side of a mountain and down the road we were on"? Well, when we got back to this section of road, there was now another flood. We slowly drove through it with someone guiding us in a canoe. We were doing fine for the first few minutes. Then it got deeper. The water level raised higher than the truck bed. Quickly, we moved all the luggage off of the floor and onto the benches. I sat on the bench with a bunch of stuff on my lap with water almost up to my knees. We were pretty nervous. If the engine died, we were screwed. The water we were driving through was as deep as I am tall. But we made it through, much to our relief, and got to Catbalogan with no further incident. We phoned the APs, and they hooked us up in the Maqueda Bay Hotel. It was a nice place, but we were stuck there until Saturday morning. The first flood had become impassable, so there were no rides coming from Tacloban. The four of us had fun, though. We got pretty close now, I think. Interesting start to our companionships.

We got back to Guiuan Saturday afternoon. It's great to be back.

Elder Culbertson is cool. He's coming from Maasin, and has been Cebuano his entire mission. He's picking up Waray pretty quick.