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Agence France-Presse
SAN FERNANDO - Jimmy Relativo's voice is full of pain, as he sits on the shoreline just metres away from the sunken Philippine ferry that is now his pregnant fiance's tomb.
He has returned to this rocky coast on central Sibuyan island hoping for word about the fate of his 22-year-old fiance Rosielyn Ligay, who was carrying his unborn child when the fateful ferry went down in Typhoon Fengshen Saturday.
He acknowledges Rosielyn is now lying somewhere in the ocean, or more likely in the sunken ship, but says he is prepared to wait for her remains to be recovered.
"I don't know if I can move on. It's very painful but the search should go on. There are still many people inside the boat, not only my wife," he said.
The couple had boarded the Princess of the Stars in Manila for the central island of Cebu last Friday to tell Ligay's father of their plans to get married and start a family.
They had taken the weekend off from their jobs in Manila, where Rosielyn works as a mall sales lady and Relativo, 26, is a bakershop employee. It appeared they had their whole lives ahead of them.
But then the typhoon changed direction and on Saturday blew right into the path of the ill-fated vessel.
"It was around nine in the morning when the ferry started to be battered by huge waves," Relativo said between sobs. "We were holding each other tightly and Rosielyn told me to prepare.
"By noon, the ferry had listed on to its side. The next thing we knew, we were sinking," he said.
Painstakingly, he recalls the last moment he saw the mother of his child.
"I thought we both jumped off the ferry but when I looked back she was still holding the rails on the side... terrified.
"I shouted at her but was hit by a wave. When I surfaced, she was gone," Relativo said, choking back the tears.
Relativo said he did not want to abandon his fiance but realised he needed to save himself. He said some people had managed to get on board a life raft and they dragged him on.
But his ordeal was far from over.
"There were 30 of us in the raft being tossed about by the sea," he said.
Some of those lucky enough to have made it onto life boats did not make it, succumbing to the massive waves.
But Relativo was one of the few lucky ones -- of the 850 passengers and crew on board the ferry, only 57 survivors have been found six days on. It is believed that most the dead are trapped in the interior of the sunken ship.
Twenty-four hours after the Princess of the Stars went down the raft Relativo was on washed up on the coast of Malunay, about 90 kilometres from the scene of the disaster.
Nearby, Alexander de la Cruz showed a picture of his eight-year-old daughter, Angeline, smiling as she sat beside her uncle, aunt and baby cousin Zayan.
De la Cruz had sent Angeline, the fourth in a brood of six, to live with the relatives in the United States so she could have a better life. The family had returned for a vacation and to visit family in the central islands.
"Her last words to me were, 'I love you, papa,'" de la Cruz said as he was consoled by relatives gathered around him.
With the search for bodies temporarily suspended after it was revealed the ferry was carrying a consignment of a deadly pesticide, de la Cruz says he will wait.
"I want to stay here until her body is found," he said, as beyond him the bow of the upturned 24,000-tonne vessel juts out from the now-tranquil bay.