The Palawan Getaway -Day 1: Baywalk, PPC

04 April 2009. After a turbulent flight, we touched down at Puerto Princesa City’s Airport, its arrival lounge still under construction. The last time I set foot in PPC was 4 years ago, on a hot, rainy summer. This time the weather was just plain hot and the state of the airport lounge made me feel like being stuffed in an oven.

Nonetheless, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around their version of Baywalk (incidentally with the same name), which used to be just a port when I saw it last. Our timing was just right for the sunset and another nice surprise… a shot to see space thru a telescope—for free. The event, Tuklasin ang Kalawakan: 100 Hours of Astronomy, was running on its last day. It was the only event of its kind in the country in celebration of the 2009 International Year of Astronomy and we’re lucky to have been part of it. There’s a catch, however, which involves waiting in line for 4 hours. We got the tickets at 6:30 PM and we reached the end of the line at almost 10:00 PM. And before the lecture began, there was another waiting period because one of the kids touched the telescope pointed at Saturn thereby causing it to misalign. And the telescope realignment, though computerized, still took up time.

Oh! but to see the heavens was worth the wait. It was just fascinating to see the moon and its pockmarked surface and its mountains, and Saturn with its ring wrapped around its gaseous body in a 90˚ angle position--the technician said that's how it looks when its setting in the night sky. To see its details through the scope’s small viewfinder makes me appreciate Galileo’s contributions. Who would have known that the minuscule dots lining up the night sky are actually marvels worth the glimpse? So much for our first day, what with the stars' names to memorize like Castor, Pollux, Sirius, Bellatrix (though they remind me of Face Off and Harry Potter)... and terms like asterism and balatik, the latter being a Palaweño word for a pig trap, which is what the ancient Palaweños saw in Orion's constellation and not some hunter as the constellation is now known for.... Whew!

We capped the day with a very late dinner at Kinabuch, one of the few places still open. And yes, we were so hungry we could have built a balatik to catch a pig.