Best Kept (Philippine beach) Secret!

Aquamarine!

It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

The place: Pangasinan

It’s easy to get there… all you need is a car (and gas, of course). But the few hours of travel is so worth it when you see this.

When we were there last year, the sea was restless. You couldn’t swim without being tossed around pretty good. Thing is, I don’t think it’s advisable to swim here. The corals are pretty rough. The only thing we managed was to wade in the water, but even then, it shook us up pretty bad and kept throwing us back up onto the shore.

What’s beautiful is that, to get here, you have to get across a huge, rough patch of dead corals that can slice through your Havaiianas. Seriously. Our friend cut his feet because he was wearing thin slippers, lost his balance and stubbed his toe on the scraggly ground. But no pain, no gain. We love it because, first, there’s no sign anywhere that points to this part of the beach. I don’t think there are any resorts this side of the beach. The very few small houses we saw were privately owned. The only reason we got here was our guide, the owner of Punta Riviera, knew the locals and the way to this area.

Those overhangs? They are made up of dead corals. From what we gathered from our host, the water receded over thousands of years, leaving them hanging out (!) and looking out into the sea from the beach. And, like I said, they are made up of very sharp fossils (or whatever they are called).

The place is unbelievably gorgeous… It’s quiet. We hardly saw anyone around. The seven of us that visited then were probably the only ones there at that time (and what seemed like in the whole world). If you build a retirement house here, you could wash away all the stress in your system in a day! We pray to God this place remains empty and almost secluded forever—ergo, I won’t tell you exactly where it is or how to get there. Irresponsible tourists are the bane of this magnificent existence.

Bolinao and the Beach Dawg!

We don't really know this dog, but he seemed to be reading our minds... or mocking us. Pansy tourists who don't want to get their feet wet.

Story was, Bolinao had surprised us. Nobody ever told us to go visit Bolinao. We did so back in August (2007) because, well, we were bored with the usual places we've been to. And we saw this advertising billboard with the name of a resort... and we wrote them a letter and they would not be bothered having some media people over because, well, we guess they're already way popular with people who put up billboards. But thank God they did not approve our proposal because, upon our research where they were located, we found another place (called Punta Riviera, which I'll probably talk about in another entry) and the people were much nicer, open to having us stay for a few days and feed us. And through the resort's very nice owners, we got to explore a little bit of Bolinao.

Bolinao, Pangasinan holds a wealth of treasures that nature lovers would find alluring. There's pools of fresh water inside caves where, for a very small fee, you can swim (just pray there's not a bunch of other rather noisy tourists when you get there... so best visit during low tourist season); there's a stretch of off-white sand (but warning, there will be lots of people there... so head for the farthest points but keep an eye on your stuff); there's the old lighthouse to visit; there's the beach where, as the sea has receded over so many years, you are left with rough corals that partly protrudes over the water like small cliffs (lovely out there, but the sharp corals could get you!). And so on.

This lovely dog, we "met" while we were waiting for a small motorized boat to take us down a river. It had been drizzling, the weather about an hour away from becoming, well, bad... and the boatman our host had talked to did not show up. Classic miscommunication. But from the looks of our bunch, none of us wanted to go back to the resort yet, at least not until we knew there's really nothing to be done.

Our host got a boat, eventually, and while we were all daintily walking along the beach not wanting to get our feet wet before we went on the boat (God knows why... we were on vacation anyway and it's not like we would not get wet eventually since we'd been hanging out at our hosts' beach-front pool every chance we got), this dog showed us who "the man" was. Obviously him. Come on, you pansies... this is how you do it.

I think we managed to climb aboard marginally dry, but good God, his way was obviously more fun. Next time, I'd go with people who don't mind getting their feet wet!