Writing Trip

Wifi connection at the gas station is kaput… been like that the last week and on this windy Monday night, still is. Oh well, guess there will be times such as this…

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Tick tock tick tock… long weekend’s almost here! And what do I have planned for such an occasion? Well, there’s the laundry… and maybe a little overdue home repairs. Yes, without the benefit of cash, I am doomed to spend the long weekend at home. No worries, wouldn’t want to join the mob lined up at the toll gates and side streets anyway.

And speaking of out of town trips, Nolan and I were talking over the weekend and he suggested I try our writing some sort of travelogue… the kind that makes it on travel magazines and in-flight reading materials. Hmm, seems simple enough, I thought, maybe I should? Topic, we agreed, would be our Calaguas Island adventure not so long ago. Trouble was that I did try to write about it but found myself coughing up bits and pieces of information that certainly did not paint a clear picture of the trip nor much of how fun and relaxing it was. So here I am, doing it over… ahem ahem…

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A few kilometers off the coast of Camarines Norte, the Calagua Islands has been whispered among the community of weekend adventurers as one of the archipelago’s best kept secrets. Tales of powdery white sands, pristine waters and rolling hills isolated from the general populace only adds to its allure, and being smack in the middle of the typhoon belt, only the brave dare to go forth with this adventure. Surprisingly, I found myself headed south from Manila to try my luck.

The drive starts from the urban jungle of Metropolitan Manila at midnight, a convoy of 2 cars with 4 passengers each. The 6 hour journey that will take us to the sleepy town of Vinzons, Camarines Sur speeds us through highways, winding roads and mountain passes, including a notable stint across Quezon’s well preserved primary rain forests that make up the Quezon National Park. Daybreak finds us crossing the regional boundary between Quezon and Camarines Norte, at the foot of Mt. Elena and soon we found ourselves having breakfast in the rustic ancestral home of Vinzons’ native, Arch. Obey Ferrer, who also made arrangements for the boat which would taxi us to the Calaguas and back.

We hurriedly got our things together for the morning’s boat ride to the Calaguas, loading our gear aboard a fishing boat docked at the riverside. The tide was about to shift making the river journey quite treacherous, the boat could easily bottom out under unskilled hands, but we were nonetheless treated to a magnificent view of nipa plants lining the river as well as a preview of the famed Bagasbas beach from the river delta. Upon reaching the open sea, our boat was rocked by the Pacific swells, making known the great ocean that lay at our foremast, and on the horizon we could make out the tiny blips of land that was to be our destination.

The boat ride took 2 hours, and by then we were cruising past dark cliffs, green hills and of course, white sand beaches in their protective coves. Small fishing boats were afloat, cast off from these islands with a population of more or less a hundred people. If you wanted isolation, these islands offered a lot of it. At last, the boat beached itself in a large cove, lined with probably a third of a kilometer of the finest white sand that you could plant your feet on. Save for 3 nipa huts that the locals had erected as shelter for the occasional visitors, there was nothing by way of a resort on the island. Just the clear calm waters, the green hills and the splendid white sand beach in between.

As luck would have it, we chanced upon a sunny day filled with blue skies and white clouds. The sun burned our skins but the sand was never too hot for our bare feet as the lot of us frolicked in it and swam in the water the whole day. Some locals who whiled time away in the cove offered to get us water for drinking and bathing at very reasonable prices, and one could also ask them to cook some of the freshest catch from the sea bought from the fishing villages on the other side of the island.

Under the right conditions, the beach proves to be a great spot for die-hard landscape photographers with a multitude of natural subjects and the clearest blues and whites as a backdrop. And as the afternoon sun sets on the horizon, the sand plays host to our little tent city lit with a bonfire, roasting our dinners and warming our spirits underneath a bejeweled sky.

The journey back was filled with fond memories of this isolated landscape, and all the effort and time invested in this little pilgrimage was well worth it. As the early morning found us back in the congested metropolis, that small speck of land will always occupy a large chunk of our minds of what a weekend getaway is supposed to be like.

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For those of you who made the journey with me, I obviously left out some “minor” details that could be correctly construed as one of those unfortunate freak accidents. But I’m sure you’ll agree with me that though bothersome, it hadn’t drenched out good memories of the place at all, further fortifying our collective resolve to Never Stop Exploring (to borrow a phrase from Jundel’s TNF, hehehe).