BUSUANGA BOOGIE
By Arin Greenwood

Mari – "Like Mari-juana," he says – is a big man with a shaved head and one gold hoop earring who looks like a menacing Mr. Clean. By his account, Mari is Spanish but has never lived in Spain. He has worked all over the world – except Spain - as an oil engineer for Haliburton, has achieved high rankings in several countries' armies, and is now the owner of the bar on the water where he, me, my brother Lee, and my boyfriend Brian sit – along with a just-released Peace Corps volunteer named Matt – in a town called Coron on an island called Busuanga in the Philippines.

We tell Mari we want to go to Calauit Island, up in the north of Busuanga. It's the island that Ferdinand Marcos populated with a hundred-plus zebras and giraffes and other grazing animals from Kenya in the 1970s; they've lived there since, in a Philippine African savannah simulacrum.

"Is it true that Marcos brought the animals there so he and his son could go hunting?" I ask.

Mari looks dead serious. "I knew Marcos. His son Bong Bong is my child's godfather. The animals were put there because civil war was breaking out in Kenya. The Kenyan president asked Marcos to take the giraffes and zebras so they would not be exterminated. Marcos loved animals. The island is a nature reserve and the animals are safe there."

"Weren't people living on Calauit before the giraffes got there?" Brian asks. We have read that more than two hundred people were removed from the island when the giraffes and co. arrived.

"No," Mari says. "Lies."

We eat the pizza made by Matt's girlfriend Ana, who is the cook at Mari's bar. It's good pizza.

We're sitting outside at beautiful wood tables under a viney thatched roof looking out at the water and drinking bottles of San Miguel Light.

Mari says. "I'm going to start a business leading overnight tours there. No one else is doing that but I know the park rangers and I can arrange it." Mari takes his cell phone off the wood table and starts texting with aplomb.

On a long-tail outrigger boat the next day, Jojo – a German divemaster whose wife owns a karaoke place in Coron Town's market – says that Mari once held up a Spanish guy with a knife. I want to go to Calauit Island but I don't want to go with Mari – on top of the braggartliness and the purported knife incident, his girlfriend, who was hanging around the bar the day before, seems to be underaged, which makes me very uncomfortable.

Lee and Brian say I'm being silly. "Mari's going to arrange everything," Lee says. "He might already have arranged everything. He's probably not dangerous."

We stop by Mari's bar after diving. His girlfriend is twirling around the room. Mari tells us that a jeep will take us on the three-hour trip to where we catch the boat that will take us to the island. The park rangers have agreed to let us stay in the staff housing, which – Mari warns us – is bare: "Mattresses and mosquito nets."

The price he gives us for everything is in the range of $20-$30; it's nothing, it's settled. We're to come back to the bar in the morning so Ana can take us to the market for stocking up on food and flashlights and water and beer and coffee and everything else we'll need for the overnight trip. At nine the next morning we collect Matt and Ana at Mari's and walk over to the market. The market's busy and hot and there are pigs in pens waiting to be slaughtered, and fish in bins waiting to be bought. At nine in the morning Jojo's wife's karaoke place is already hopping; we can hear people singing at the same decibel level as pigs squealing. We buy kilos and kilos of everything and Matt tells us that he's wary of Mari mainly for financial reasons – "Why isn't he helping to pay for food?" Matt asks. "He's going to eat the food, too, isn't he?"

Matt confronts Mari with this when we get back to the bar. Mari throws his hands in the air and says, "Of course I should help pay for the food. What is my share?" It's a couple of hundred pesos – less than five dollars – and then Mari remembers that he forgot to add in the cost of staying in the staff houses in the trip price, so the cost of the trip goes up by a marginal amount. This is amusing to us but not to Matt, who has spent two years as a Peace Corp-ster earning the kind of money that makes a couple of dollars very valuable.

We drive north in the island on unpaved roads past bamboo houses set off the ground on poles. The views of the sea are stunning. The car – driven by an affable man named Danny – is comfortable. Lee and Brian and Matt and Ana drink San Miguel along the way. Mari says he doesn't drink when the sun is shining. I nap.

Three hours later we're loading our bags upon bags of food and supplies onto a narrow outrigger long-tail boat being piloted by a boy who tells us that there are crocodiles in the water. Men are standing in the water fishing. We see no crocodiles.

It takes less than ten minutes to get from the Busuanga side of the water to Calauit Island, where we are greeted by several reserve staff members and by a trio of Philippine eagles. They are striking looking animals – the biggest eagles in the world - with their cream-colored heads and large brown bodies. One eagle is tied by its leg to the sign welcoming visitors to Calauit Island, Wildlife Sanctuary; the others are tethered to bamboo.

We walk up a dirt path to the staff housing, which is a one-story concrete building that is decrepit and smacks of adventure. A herd of zebras is out front. Zebras! They graze on grass and don't move until we get too close, at which point they trot their striped selves off en masse. Mari asks Ana to cook and she similarly storms off; she is here as a guest, not as a staff member - let Mari pay her way if she is going to work, she says as we walk off with her.

We find a pen filled with giraffes. Giraffes! They look just like you think they'd look – spotted, impossibly long-necked, camel-faced, dinosaur-like - but even more so. Gorgeous animals, we feed them branches that we collect from around their pen and marvel at feeding giraffes; they have surprisingly strong tugs when they chew the leaves off the branches with their flat teeth and long black tongues.

We go for a walk on a dirt road. Ana tells us she wants to leave Mari's bar and go work for Bruno, a French man who owns a tiny bistro in Coron Town. We walk back to the staff housing. Mari says he's been worried about us. "There are cobras and pythons here," he says. "You cannot just walk around."

The island's staff cook the food we've bought; I try to help but they don't want help so I go to the outdoor eating area which is filled with long picnic benches.

Someone puts banana leaves on the picnic tables and then someone else puts piles of meat, rice, vegetables, and a whole fish on the leaves.

"Dinner will be served Filipino-style," Mari says. "No forks. You eat with your hand. Only your right hand, unless you're left-handed." This matters here because the staff toilet is flanked with a tap whose water – no soap - takes the place of toilet paper.

We drink beer and eat with our right hands, except me because I'm left handed. After we eat Mari builds a campfire and he and Brian and Lee sit around it drinking more San Miguels and talking about how Mari's young girlfriend – she's 16, he tells them - might be pregnant and if she is the baby might be his. Mari tells Brian and Lee that he learned from his father never to pay child support or alimony, only to set up trusts for children and wives. I play cards for hours with Matt and Ana. We watch a spider catch insects in its web.

Bed on the cots under the mosquito nets. Electricity goes out at eleven. I dream about crocodiles; it's not a bad dream, just exciting.

Before six the animals start making fantastic noises. I get up and walk outside. There are birds flying out of trees, and the zebras are walking around in front of the staff housing again, and eating. There are horses, too, and gazelles and other luminous furry things that eat in the soft morning light. Some zebras walk into a half-built house that Mari says will be a souvenir shop at some point. A staff person tosses rocks at the zebras to get them out of the house. We eat rice and peanut butter on bread and drink instant coffee, get dressed and climb into an open-air truck for a little safari with a bunch of day-trippers. We drive along the dirt road and pass a bamboo house next to a rice paddy.

"Someone lives here?" I ask Mari.

"Damn squatters," Mari says. "No one lived on this island before the giraffes got here but now everyone likes to say that they are from here. They think they will get money."

The truck takes us through jungle and to a pen where there are some indigenous animals. We see a tiny animal called a Palawan Mousedeer – it is the world's smallest deer and hops manically around its pen while people take pictures. Another small friendly encaged animal is called the Palawan Bearcat. It is a civet that eats bananas from people's hands and smells like musk. Mari says that Calauit Island is becoming a sanctuary for all kinds of endangered indigenous animals; not just giraffes and zebras and non-indigenous animals anymore.

"You know Filipinos," he says. "They'll eat anything. These animals need protection."

"Is there a veterinarian?" Ana asks.

"There is no veterinarian," says Mari.

"What happens when the animals die?"

"What do you think?" Mari says, rubbing his stomach. "You can't tell giraffe from any other meat."

We feed the giraffes again and it is just as glorious as it had been the night before. Mari takes pictures of us feeding the giraffes to use to advertise his overnight Calauit Island tours and then says he can't use the photos because none of us looks outdoorsy enough. He shows us the huts he is building for his overnight tours, and says that the person who was supposed to install tiles stopped showing up a couple of weeks ago.

When we get back to the staff housing Mari says we should pack quickly and leave. We get back to the pier where the same young driver takes us across the stunning water, with the big green jungly islands all around us. Mari explains all his tattoos to me as we cross the water – one is a dragon designed by a tattoo designer who came to his bar; one is his astrological symbol, one is the initials of a black magic group he belongs to. The one on his back, he says, is of the two animals that symbolize his personality: the snake and the ram.

"Snake and rat?" Ana says.

"Ram," says Mari. "Not rat."

"What kind of black magic do you do?" I ask.

"We make people disappear," he says.

We stop for lunch and to swim at a perfect waterfall on the way home.

In Coron Town we all check into a hotel that is made of bamboo. The hotel is right on the water, and costs eight dollars a night. The owner is an American guy named Jim we get talking to at the bar. He says he was in Palawan in the Peace Corps thirty years ago, doing veterinary work and that he has been asked to do veterinary work on Calauit Island but there's no money to pay him for it. Jim says he likes Mari but feels badly for him.

"He has no money," Jim says. "He used to own several bars and restaurants but he lost them, and now he's just managing this other place. He is a good decorator but no good with business and he makes up stories about himself…"

Later we go to Bruno's for dinner. Bruno is a tiny man who wears a ponytail and Aloha shirts with the top buttons undone and semi-dirty jeans. Bruno goes back into the restaurant's kitchen to work his own kind of magic every time someone orders something. He makes wonderful French onion soup – or, as Brian points out several times, since Bruno is French, the soup is just onion soup. We ask Bruno where he gets ingredients to make food so good and he says he gets the ingredients shipped in from elsewhere in the country, even the meats.

"You don't get your meat from the market?" Lee asks.

"I don't like how they kill the pigs here," Bruno says. "They are beaten and kicked before they are killed. The pigs are very afraid before they die. The animal shouldn't know it is going to die – it is cruel, it makes the meat very…tough. When I import the meat I can pretend that the animals are killed in a better way…"

There are paintings of jungles and birds all over the walls of Bruno's restaurant and the food is delicious – not delicious for a small town in a remote part of the Philippines, but just plain delicious. I can see why Ana would want to work here.

We tell Bruno we've just come from Calauit Island and ask Bruno if he knows whether the island was set up for hunting or as a sanctuary. Bruno shrugs in that French way that implies everything and says nothing for sure.

"I worked for Marcos for many years," Bruno says. "I met him maybe six times. And I have to say that I do not think Calauit is for hunting."

"What did you do for Marcos?" someone asks.

"I used to work as a topographer," Bruno says. "I explored Palawan Island. Do you know the skeleton that was found in the Tabon cave in Palawan? I found that."

Palawan is the southern island in the Philippines where that missionary couple was kidnapped in 2001 and the skeleton in question is the Tabon Cave Man – who is the oldest prehistoric human found in the Philippines. It is an impressive discovery, to be sure.

"I also worked in Chile for General Pinochet," Bruno says, drinking his whiskey. "I met him maybe seven times." Bruno's wife, Melody – who had one year left of engineering school when Bruno married her and brought her to Coron Town - pours him more whisky whenever the glass gets empty.

"You worked for Pinochet?" I ask. "What was that like?"

"It was okay for me," says Bruno. "I am not as left-wing as perhaps you are."

A very drunk man from Switzerland comes in and orders a San Miguel and starts talking incessantly. He wears tight red shorts and a tight red tank top that says "Borocay" – a beach resort town in the Philippines. The man says he lives in Manila, and comes from Manila to Coron Town at least once a month to eat at Bruno's, a statement which makes Bruno wave his hands again.

The drunk man is with a woman who wears a purple halter top and khaki shorts and who looks agitated and sober; she fingers a San Miguel Light but doesn't drink it. The drunk man says slowly "I always come here with my girlfriend," and she says, "Wife." Brian asks the drunk man what he does in Manila and the man wiggles his eyebrows and ears and says, "I wouldn't call it money cleansing exactly…"

We come back to Bruno's again for brunch the next morning and eat the most delicious omelettes I've ever eaten, with perfectly cooked fresh eggs and melty cheese and lovely home-baked bread. It is Lee and Brian and my last morning in Coron Town; we're going home in the afternoon and feeling quite sad about it. We sit at a table with Matt and Ana and their friend Joe, who has just gotten out of Peace Corps two days before and who is already eating his second breakfast of the day – he gives us bites of his big fluffy pancakes and says, "I can't stop eating."

There is a photo of a man riding a bicycle over a waterfall across the table from Joe. "That's the French Baker," Joe says. "He rode his bicycle from France through China and down to the Philippines. He used to be the chef for the Sultan of Brunei and now he lives in Sagada – where they have the hanging coffins - and smokes a lot of pot and does some catering. He is an amazing cook."

"His name is Philippe. I used to work with him," says Bruno. "He is a good man but we cannot work together." Bruno makes the waving gesture near his face he's used several times before to describe various people he knows who drink or smoke too much.

After breakfast we walk to the market and stop into Jojo's wife's karaoke place, which is bright yellow and right on the water – you can see the sun and water and boats reflected in the karaoke monitor. People are there drinking large bottles of a fortified beer called Red Horse and singing ballads. The karaoke microphone is covered with a paper napkin because if you touch it directly you'll get a strong shock – Ana says this sort of karaoke dangerousness is normal.

"I hurt my lips all the time," Joe says. "Don't let your lips touch the mike."

We drink a little beer and sing a couple of ballads and then it's time for us to go. As we collect our bags from the hotel a block away we still can hear Matt crooning. Someone at the hotel says, "Who is that singing?" and a member of the hotel staff says, "Some drunk American."