Siquijor

Siquijor Island for Holy Week: one of the places in the world that marries up traditional religion with local voodoo/animalistic/folk medicine practices. Think Brazil, Haiti, Mexico and, dare I say, Ireland in some respects? I think it's fair to say I've had a more spiritual and superstition-filled Easter than I would usually have at home. Missed the creme eggs, that's for sure.

Good Friday: we watched the Easter sunset procession of Holy Family and Saint statues around the capital, Siquijor Town. It was beautiful, with old ladies in Spanish lace, rosaries dripping from their fingers, 12 young apostles dressed in individually named robes, colourful flowers blessed by holy water and plucked for luck at the end of the ceremony, the town all turned out in their Sunday best, and the whole event starting and ending in St Francis of Assisi church, which is part-constructed from coral.

A highly unusual Easter...

Easter Saturday, aka Black Saturday, is when the island's "sorcerers" cook up the year's batch of herbs in giant woks. In the interests of journalistic research, we did go to see this ritual at Juan Ponse's collection of huts up in the hills. He is the most well-known healer/shaman on Siquijor, and is now in his 70s. The sumpa that is produced from the cooking is used to ward off evil spirits; in the past, soldiers during the Vietnam War came to purchase amulets to protect them from bullets, for example. We also met a 'bubbleman' in the evening who performs 'healings' by means of a magic stone which sits in a water pipe that he blows into. Normally, I would take all this with a pinch of gobbledegook salt but the atmosphere on the island was quite spooky and so was quite glad to leave the folk healer world behind and get to...

Easter Sunday. Met with a young priest in a 400-year-old convent in the south of the island and his mad cook, who kept tapping me for polo mints for her bad throat. His church was from Spanish invasion times, centuries ago, with a beautiful grotto under an acacia tree that spread its branches almost 50 metres across. Inside the church, there were bats hanging from the roof, sleeping the day away to the sound of Easter hymns being sung. We circumnavigated the island for the rest of the day, jumping and diving off rocks into a series of freshwater waterfalls called Cambugahay (google-image this one!). Beautiful. And finally met lots of Filipinos/pinas - we were adopted by several families who were picnicking there, and as a consequence, both me and Peter are going to appear all over Friendster like a bad rash very soon (Friendster kicks MySpace's a** in the 'Pines).

So, a highly unusual Easter. And today we have just arrived on a new Island - Negros - for a three-day stay in the city of Dumaguete. After a very slow pace on a practically deserted beach for the last four days (in which you had to order all your meals hours ahead or eat nothing!), we are badly in need of some 'life'. Currently staying at this joint (http://haroldsmansion.com/), which looks a little like it belongs on South Beach, Miami, but they have free tea and coffee all day, free internet, free breakfast and a view of the volcano from our free balcony.

Think we might be diving tomorrow. Wish me luck. During low tide, I snorkelled over a baby sea snake this morning, couldn't have been more than 6 inches below me... unfortunately I think it's breeding season. Apo Island marine sanctuary, here we come. Eek!

Bisous! xxx