The last mornings of a trip have their own atmosphere: a certain deliberateness in the way things are packed, a last look at a room before you pull the door, breakfast eaten with more attention than usual because you know what’s waiting at the end of the day. We were at the port early. The ferry back to Hagnaya was the same crossing in reverse — the same sea, the same flat northern Cebu coast resolving from the horizon, the same upper deck with everyone standing rather than sitting because standing feels less like leaving.

The van took us south, back down the spine of the island. We made a stop in Cebu City for souvenirs — the kind of stop that begins with good intentions and ends with more bags than you started with. Taboan Public Market on Colon Street is the proper place for this: dried mango, otap (the flaky oval biscuit that Cebu has perfected), danggit (dried rabbitfish, buy vacuum-sealed), rosquillos, and piaya. The market sellers are efficient and direct. You do not browse at Taboan so much as submit to the logic of it — someone puts something in your hand, you try it, you buy more than one. We came out with bags that tested the weight limits of the overhead bin.

There is always something melancholy about the drive to the airport — not grief exactly, but the particular wistfulness of a trip that went well. Five days, three coastlines, a sandbar that appeared from the sea, a sardine run that should not be real, a waterfall in the forest, food eaten at long tables with people you love. The Mactan terminal is cheerful and modern and completely indifferent to any of this, which is probably as it should be. We checked in, found a table, ordered one last meal from whatever was open, and waited for the gate to be called. Someone said we should do this again next year. Nobody disagreed.