One thing that I'm grateful about the pandemic is that it made me closer to my neighbors. The pandemic made us realized the importance of knowing the people around you and getting connected. As what I mentioned in my previous blog, because of the pandemic, our Deca Baywalk Warriors was created and our group brought so much people together. The friends of friends/ the neighbors of neighbors came as one.
Last June, in celebration of Fathers Day, my friends organized a trip to Medellin. That time I was still in Dauin, Negros Oriental but they were updating me from time to time about the status of the trip. It was such a coincidence that the schedule of the trip was also days after of the wedding of my friend so I decided to go back here in Cebu. Two birds in one stone they said.
Some of my friends didn't know I came back in Cebu and with the help of my other friends we decided to surprise them.Not sure if they were surprised though.hahaha.
It was a long travel from Cebu to Medellin and we had several stops for breakfast and for bathroom breaks. When we arrived in Eileen Beach Resort, our accommodation was not yet ready because we arrived early. We decided to wait in their nipa huts and started to nibble some snacks and chit chats. They have lots of tables, chairs and nipa huts where people could hang-out.
One of the reason why we went to Medellin was to visit Funtastic Island. While the our rooms were being prepared, we decided to rent a boat to Funtastic Island. The boat was PHP 1500 and good for 10 people. We were more than 10 who went to the island so we rented out two boats because they are strict with the number of people per boat.
There's a beautiful scenery going to the island. Luckily the weather cooperated that day, the clouds were beautiful and the water were really calm. It was like a 20 minute boat trip from our resort.
We were ecstatic when we're about to docked seeing the area where we can cliff jump. It is something I enjoy so much. The highest spot where we can jump was unfortunately closed due to some renovations. So we went to the 2nd highest instead. There were also an area which is not to high to jump which some of my friends were. hahaha
This is the highest spot to jump but unfortunately it was closed due to renovations and even if it's open it was not ideal to jump because the water was not that high.
The water was so clear but not that cold. There were also kids in the island who joined us jumping from the cliff. Most of them jumped from the 2nd highest spot. They made it seemed so easy and they were so carefree. We made fun some of our friends because the kids who were way younger than them weren't scared of jumping from the cliff while they were really frightened to be even on the spot.
I can't count how many times I jumped from the cliff because I had so much fun. I just realized now that we don't have any photos of jumping from the cliff. After we got tired of jumping, we decided to just dip in the water and just swim. When we're about to leave the island, we waited for the boat quite some time. We just hang around, got some snacks and we ended up going back to the water. Just soaking in there, made fun with each other, joke around and splashed water to each others' faces.
Our boat finally arrived and we went back to our resort. When we arrived our rooms were ready so we sorted our stuff then decided to walk around the beach and took some photos. After the photo ops we took a dip in the ocean.
Dinner time came and in celebration of Father's Day we honored all the fathers in our group. We even got them cakes. It was definitely a fun evening with lots of food, conversations and laughs.
They are now my family for over a year now but it felt like it's been ages that we knew each other. I'm so blessed to meet them, made friends with them, enjoyed their company and most importantly for them to treat me as family.
How about you, did you have a new found family because of the pandemic? Were you able to create new friendships? I would love to know.
Disclosure: Some of the photos are owned by my good friend who also run the Tan-awa Bai Facebook page. You can check some of his photos and travels here