Puerto Galera

I have just gotten back from a 3 days 2 nights Galera trip. It was definitely not the kind of experience I was hoping to get. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the company, the stories, the laughter, the secrets :p and the bloopers. I also will give Mindoro Sling the benefit of that doubt that it is a drink worth going all the way to Galera to taste (and get tipsy with). Yet, there are just some things that you can't get over without giving it a decent rant session in your blog.

1. For a long weekend, you'd expect a good number of people to be going out of the smog and hassle of the city for a vacation. But you would definitely NOT expect a mob of people going to the same vacation place! Meeting time was 4am at Buendia Station. We were fairly on time for the 4:30. However, there was a terrifyingly long queue of people waiting in line for the bus. My guess was if we did not think of an alternative mode of transportation, we might have arrived at Galera the next day.

The port in Batangas was no exception and the summer heat did not spare us at all. Arriving at White Beach in Galera, we had to look for a place as planned. We, however, did not plan to find tons of people also looking for a place to stay and hotel/motel/residential places were already filled up! Again, the summer heat did not spare us at least a breeze of comfort to dry the sweat and relax the fatigue we were already feeling. We were lucky to get help from someone who brought us to a resort (Talipanan) 2 barangays away from White Beach where we found a place to stay for the night. We planned to return to White Beach to scavenge for a place for the 2nd night.

2. We were successful with that but it costs us a lot which brings me to my second point. Everything costs something. Even when you go snorkeling, you pay 50 for the shoes, 50 for the mask, 50 for the floaters, and 50 for the boat guide. That does not count the 50 you would have to pay for the banig you'll use when you want to lay down on the beach. Too bad, the corals where beautiful and the fish were a sight. If only I was not paranoid with the things we left behind with the guide and if only I was not thinking of how much of a culprit that guide was having to make us pay a lot of money for the activity, then I would have certainly enjoyed it.

3. Finding a place to eat is like having Microsoft becoming a true open source. It was impossible! It was out of luck that we get to find a decent restaurant to eat. And that is after asking a dozen or more eating places. And again, it comes with a unfairly indecent price. Beggars can't be choosers and the hungry will just have to deal with it.

4. Coming from a place where going to the beach is a regular thing, it took me a while (and I am still trying) to understand what the is nice about Galera when you can't swim far enough or you'll get hit by an incoming boat or near to the shore since you would have to apologize for hitting someone else. In Davao or most of the beaches in Cebu, there is usually a port or a landing area for incoming boats to drop off beach goers and this port is far enough not to distrub the swimmers by the shore.

Well, it might be inappropriate to compare Galera with the beaches of Davao or Cebu most especially when I have only been to Galera once and have only seen the not so pretty side of things. I liked the resort in Aninoan or Talipanan though but I guess there wasn't that much to do for the rest of the group.

I usually go to the beach for some quiet time, away from the busy-ness of the rest of the world. It is there I forget that I am a slave to the corporate world and that there are a lot of worldly concerns that I have to resolve. The beach, and nature itself, is a nourishing place where I want to just stare blankly into the space, smell the breeze, listen to the waves and the slush of the leaves, and feel the sand and stone beneath your feet.

I guess concrete and glass has taken too much environmental space in my life that real nature is now just a small piece of the chart. I need to get out of the city a bit more.