Excellent ADVENTURE
BUS SURFING, VOLCANO RIDES AND A SEVERED EAR – OLLY WILKINS AND BEN DEAKIN DISCOVER SO MUCH MORE THAN JUST A BIKE RACE I N THE PHILIPPINES…
As a bike rider who’s been lucky enough to visit plenty of places around the world, I’ve noticed similarities with this type of trip. You arrive, drive to the mountain, build your bike and then, a week later, reverse the process. When I flew to the Philippines with the Deakinator and Roo, I thought it’d be business as usual. How wrong I was! From the moment we landed in the manic urban sprawl of Manila, the most densely-populated city in the world, we realised this wasn’t going to be your usual MTB trip. It was the perfect introduction to the most hectic adventure I’ve been on!
We’d be taking part in what we understood to be the Filipino national champs, the Narvacan MTB Challenge, and then touring the islands’ best spots. It sounds simple, but what followed was a whirlwind of the weird and wonderful. Taking part in the race on just 45 minutes of sleep was just the start of the madness. We both crashed, of course, while our host cut his ear off in a beach buggy accident! We waited around until 11pm for him to get out of hospital, then drove the 10 hours back to the airport – only to find we wouldn’t need our bikes for the next bit of the trip. We were flying to a desert island to go snorkeling!
Back on the mainland, we were whisked away to ride down a volcano inside a much larger volcano (Taal Mountain). This involved taking over a bus, with bikes inside and us sitting on the roof, and sailing a longboat through a storm… followed by a donkey uplift! This wasn’t the only peculiar uplift we had, either. In Patis’s bike park we were towed up the climb by haggard mopeds, and I can honestly say the tow up needed more focus than the descent!
Every experience added up to an unforgettable trip. The riding we crammed in was incredible and the Filipino MTB riders are hyped to ride. We ate everything from bugs and chicken legs to dead chicks inside rotten eggs (local ‘delicacy’ balut). Each day it was a mystery what our hosts, tour company Ride Philippines (www.instagram.com/ride. philippines), would lay on next – VIP clubs, wakeboarding, visiting the mayor or partying with American models. It was so fun to never know what was coming. Although our journey didn’t include camping stoves or tents, it was the truest adventure trip I’ve ever been on.