So free @ Boracay

Boracay is almost unrecognisable after the lockdown and radical renovation. There were queues of up to two hours in the harbour for registration and boat tickets. Once we arrived on Boracay, we were happy to wait another half an hour in the taxi queue and then spend up to another hour in a traffic jam for the five kilometres to the Bulabog. Today we need just 45 minutes from Caticlan harbour to our accommodation instead of three and a half hours. Boracay is finally free.

At Bulabog we run straight into many friends from Mindoro. It’s still a bit windy. Sebastian goes out for his first ride straight after checking in at Niu Ohana. I take my Edge to the Freestyle Academy for repairs. Thank you very much for the quick and inexpensive replacement of my strut valve! As the kite won’t be ready until the next morning, we immediately head out into a stormy night.

After a sundowner beer at the Bulabog, we continue to the Korean restaurant. Then pizzaria, meeting friends and finally a long night at the Exit Bar on White Beach. The beer here is served in buckets. A working girl tries to communicate something to me via the rope I’m sitting on at the edge of the bar. I can’t understand her. The last big round of Tanduhay rum later encourages me to sleepwalk. I vaguely remember wondering why I’m suddenly staying on the first floor while looking for the toilet in the hotel. Then, much to the delight of the neighbours, I get the wrong room door. After that, I prefer to lock myself in to sleep…

A lot is new on Boracay. The roads and sewage system are finally finished. In recent years, unprotected construction pits and missing manhole covers were the cause of more nasty accidents at night than during the day while kiting. Many of the buildings have been demolished or at least sawn in half. The new buildings are almost exclusively expensive white concrete. There are now far fewer Chinese terror tourists, for me the urchins among travellers. Significantly more space and fewer people now make Boracay seem almost as lonely as El Médano in the off-season in some places and at some times of day. The internet is still dripping and the power keeps cutting out…

Our four days on Boracay bring calm and tropical sultriness. After work in the morning, I take a long walk around the hills north of the Bulabog. Numerous black-built luxury resorts have been confiscated and abandoned. Large signs proudly proclaim state care. I browse through lost places past dozing dogs and enjoy the silent decay. Old kitesurfing friends from the Hangin are fuelling the anticipation of a new, distant kitespot, which we add to our route.

Some people come to Boracay just to lose themselves. The Russians seem to take whatever they can get here in terms of drugs. They seem to get quite a lot. Duterte’s drug “policy” guarantees a special thrill. After the first night, I’m already quite alcohol-impaired and take a break. I work in the morning and sleep a lot in the afternoon. Walk around. I look for the cool old pirate hostels on the Bulabog that have long since been demolished. There must have once been 40 hostels right on the beach here. Today there are only ten active ones left – and a few quietly rotting white ruins interspersed with gaps between teeth. Seen from the water, it looks as if Boracay is grinning at you with a sneer after biting into the edge of the pavement…

On the penultimate evening, we say goodbye to our last friends at Diniwid Beach in the north. A bar serves good, expensive food and the DJ provides a pleasant chill-out. The beer flows as well as the stories. The sun sets in a blaze of colour behind blue sails. Not even two rowdy English aggro expats manage to discolour it. I’m a bit tired of travelling. The wind doesn’t pick up again until the day we leave. Until then, Boracay resembles a tropical pressure cooker in the calm. I mutate into a human waterfall. Up to four showers a day don’t help much…