F&G: 100 Islands

October 18, 2012

Before we forget, a belated happy birthday to Darly and early happy birthday to Mom/Lisa!

We met at the IPC office early Monday morning to leave for our drive up to Bolinao in Pangasinan. Our group of 17 was on the road by 6:00 and seemed to escape Manila before the heavy rush hour traffic had arrived. Once safely beyond Manila, we stopped for breakfast at a rest area very similar to those on highways in the US and Canada right down to the Starbucks and 7-11. Everyone ordered breakfast at Jollibee’s, the Philippines’ version of McDonalds.

After breakfast we piled back into our vans and drove north for four hours, passing many carabao, goats, great egrets, and rice paddies. We arrived at the docks of Bolinao for our three-hour boat tour of the Hundred Islands where we were able to hike around three of the larger islands and enjoy a packed lunch on the beach. After surviving our bangka running out of gas and almost losing the front end of one of our stabilizers, we had just one last hour of driving until we reached Puerto del Sol, a lovely resort right on the beach. We could walk out 50 yards from the beach in knee high water before hitting the breakwater. Our leader at IPC had arranged for a candlelight dinner on the beach of salmon caught earlier in the afternoon—all very picturesque and serene.

Tuesday morning brought another blue-skied day and we enjoyed a long walk on the beach before breakfast. A bit into our walk we noticed that the blowing leaves on the beach beneath us were in fact crabs with fabulous camouflage to blend them in with the sand. On closer glance, we also realized that the shells all around us were actually little hermit crabs. After a breakfast of Spam and eggs we had one more wade in the ocean before heading over to Bolinao’s famous light house. We paused for lunch at Tummy Teasers, which fortunately did not tease our tummies on the drive home and had one last stop at a local market to pick up pasalumbong, or souvenirs. We were very grateful that the pounds of both fresh and dried fish purchased by several members of our group didn’t smell too strongly on the final three hours of the drive. We enjoyed our first experience outside of Manila, but appreciated our apartment back in Marikina City Tuesday night even more.