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narrow escape

Posted on July 29, 2011 @ 2:40 pm by massimo | Filed under: advertisement,beach,blog,boracay,cheap,fear,illustration,island,mythology,news,package tour,philippines,sailing,wordpress

Andrew was an Australian I met in Boracay. He lived in General Luna, Siargao Island main town, fronting the pacific Ocean. Andrew owned a paraw and he used to go sailing in the Siargao sea, among  unpolluted and enchanting islands: Dinagat, Dako, Anahwan, La Januza. “An obsession!” he claimed. His tales were so enthusiastic that Gino and I could nothing but leave Boracay, go to General Luna, rent a paraw, and go sailing togheter with Andrew. In a nut shell,  there is a special feeling when you realise that you are sailing the immense and powerful Pacific Ocean on board a paraw: such a tiny boat,  a sort of unravel threat! And really our last navigation was threatening. In the late afternoon we found ourselves a mile off La Januza; we decided to head back to General Luna, at a distance of around ten  nautical miles. The wind was dropping; we tacked upwind but I suddenly  realised that the rudder blade was off the hull: its precarious tin pintles had given up. Meanwhile the gentle and constant wind pushed us towards the open sea! No wonder that we felt lost and panicked: no water or food on board, no compass, nothing but a piece of rope to bind ourselves to the mast. In the sunset light we saw Andrew’s paraw sailing home fast, getting far, while on the opposite side the unreachable La Januza looked a mirage. But, hurra! Neptune and Eolus themselves woke up togheter to save us: after a 20 minutes long hopeless drifting, the wind changed and we finally managed to land in the dusk  in La Januza beach. The island people who had previously noticed our drifiting were waiting for us. Perhaps I spent my life dearest night inside a rented room on that remote little island. The next day as soon as we had the rudder repaired, we sailed back to General Luna where an amazed Andrew was waiting for us. What else can I say? For sure our short tour had not been  a cheap package holidays!

Illustration Friday topic is: obsession

a surprising man…

Posted on August 22, 2008 @ 10:52 am by massimo | Filed under: another green world,art,bargain,blog,boracay,fashion,fun,illustration,india,island,news,people,philippines,thailand,travel,ukiyo-e,wordpress

I like to edit again an old post written on November the 22, 2006…this fellow had a totally anti-routine life…it’s worth taking a look at his “biography” that my friend Gino edited recently in his blog.
Enjoy!

Among the strange people that I met, Max Maxwell is certainly the most unfathomable. I firstly met Max in Boracay Island in 1990. Max came from Bombay and belongs to the Parsee upper-class.
At that time he was a fit, middle aged man who enjoyed beach-tennis, wind surfing and excellent Italian food. He basically travelled between Boracay, Koh Lanta, Laddak and Hong Kong, making his earn out of fashionable batik-shirts, rattan-bags, Tibetan amulets and first rate (yet fake) Ray-Ban sunglasses. Max had an enormous ego, he was desperately scornful and selfish and, for some reason, he always surprised me. He had seen the World, that was the fact! When some harmless tourist, tried to approach him by asking silly questions such us “have you been…?”, Max’s provocative answer simply was: “thanks for not talking to me!”. And that was all. As I said Max loved food and he was among Gino’s selected acquaintances.
At that time Gino ran the cosiest restaurant in Boracay -according to Max’s parameters- and one day at Gino’s, for some unpredictable reason, Max allowed himself to talk to me! Max abhorred “stupid talks” but, after a good beer (he used to sip beer always by the same special glass that he-himself carried in a bag), Gino and I had the chance of glancing over his wonderful life. Finally Max decided to present Gino his photocopied “biography“. The document (his masterpiece) stated the man “born in Bombay during a devastating cyclone” and amazingly went on with Max ”making friends with Miles Davis, art-directing Vogue Magazine, etc”. I still have the rattan-bag that he sold me and still I wear those fake Ray-Ban sunglasses;  Gino and I still disputed about his reliability, his clever scorn and puzzling behaviour, until on December 8, 2006 we  received a stunning report:

BREAKING NEWS:
MAX MAXWELL DIES IN GOA AFTER COMMITTING SUICIDE. HE LEFT A NOTE IN WICH HE SAYS :
“DON’T BE SORRY FOR ME. I’M THE ONE TO DECIDE MY TIME WAS OVER”

Illustration Friday ’s topic is: routine

split tongued spirit

Posted on May 24, 2008 @ 4:28 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,boracay,fear,fun,holidays,island,news,philippines,sailing,swimming,wordpress

paraw boracay aynaku illustration travel

Swimming in open sea is my favourite sport: yet it scares me a little. As soon as I jump into the water, some sort of split tongued spirit talks and says out of the vast sea: “maybe you could sink and die”. When the spirit talks louder my worries can’t be denied. But I never gave up. On the contrary I keep my eyes wide open, looking for some potential danger…
The waters out of Boracay’s beach are always damn crowded by fast boats cruising at any time of the day. It is a real hassle, since local pilots seem to care absolutely nothing of swimmers, nor to understand how fragile a floating man is. It’s hard for me to forget the time when a fast paraw nearly broke me down…The reckless driver simply couldn’t see me, I guess because of the dusk…

Illustration Friday’s topic is: worry

elettricity

Posted on May 10, 2008 @ 5:54 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,fear,illustration,indonesia,island,news,people,philippines,sailing,travel,wordpress

Lightnings are electrical discharges, giant sparks of electricity, from mature storms. Lightnings cause a lot of electric current to pass through water; wooden boats are not safe at all since the vast majority of lightning injuries and deaths occur on small boats with no cabin…
The short sea …

multiple

Posted on February 23, 2008 @ 11:27 pm by massimo | Filed under: another green world,art,blog,boracay,cheap,fashion,fun,illustration,island,news,philippines,t-shirt,travel,wordpress

In the Philippines, the western wind is called Habagat and the rainy season comes with it. The rains in Boracay were usually a bit oppressive to me, as the dullness went on for weeks, driving my mood to absolute lethargy; moreover I was running out of money quickly. All of us …

lapu lapu

Posted on November 10, 2007 @ 6:30 pm by massimo | Filed under: animals,beach,blog,boracay,food,illustration,island,news,philippines,ukiyo-e,wordpress

Red groupers typically have a stout body and a large mouth. They are not built for long-distance fast swimming. They can be quite large, usually largest fish of the grouper family, and their body, soft dorsal and anal fins, are covered with scales and thick skin.
Lapu Lapu is the Pilipino name …

sarong

Posted on June 12, 2007 @ 10:05 pm by massimo | Filed under: africa,ancona,art,beach,blog,fashion,fun,illustration,india,indonesia,island,kenya,mediterranean,news,philippines,thailand,wordpress

No much time to post this week: I’m rather busy with the Cuprarte Art Festival opening, next Saturday. So I have drawn myself wearing a sarong. Sarongs are large sheet of fabric, wrapped around the waist and worn as a skirt by men and women throughout much …

calamansi

Posted on May 12, 2007 @ 3:34 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,boracay,cheap,fashion,food,fun,illustration,island,news,philippines,wordpress

Calamansi, is easy to spell, hard to forget, and adds zing when you least expect it! Calamansi is the most commonly grown backyard tree in the Philippines, among the citrus species. It is a small tree with a height of about 2 meters, with broad egg-shaped, …

postmaster

Posted on February 24, 2007 @ 11:12 am by massimo | Filed under: art,beach,blog,boracay,fashion,fun,holidays,illustration,island,news,people,philippines,travel,wordpress

With no internet, fax, telephone, even electricity, communications with the outer world was not that easy in Boracay in the early 90’s.
The tiny island was actually set apart fairly and that was its very charm to me, at last. Yet the small concrete-building at one end of the island, …

crash

Posted on February 10, 2007 @ 11:08 am by massimo | Filed under: beach,blog,boracay,fashion,fear,fun,illustration,music,news,people,philippines,travel,wordpress

I always like stormy weather and perhaps I am a hopeless romantic. A few days after I got the island of Boracay, were I was about to spend such a long time,  I went to the local disco, a place …

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