Daniela Andrade's Cover of Bill Murray by Phantogram
HOURLIES
3:00 PM: We enlisted the help of a friendly local to come and pick us up at around this time and guide us through the mountain, but he was nowhere to be found. We were beginning to get restless; if we wanted even a smack of light to help us cook dinner, we'd better get moving soon.
4:00 PM: Got tired of waiting, and decided to try our luck anyway. We trudged up the soft sand and up to the mountain waiting ahead of us.
I wish i could say it was a piece of cake, but i couldn't. Gddmn the mountain was stony and my already thin slippers were not enough protection for my feet. The weeds (sorry; i don't know what those tall grass things were called) reached up to my thighs and licked them like fire. Good thing they were there, though - I grabbed them by the handful to keep from dying a ridiculous death: "death by mountain."
5:30 PM: reached half of the mountain. I think at some point we took a wrong turn and ended up on the road perilously less traveled.
Watching the early vestiges of the sun setting was a reward in it's own right. Watching it from a tall place at this beautiful cove was a reward quite humbling. Even though i was literally drenched in sweat from climbing and my hands were full of cuts i don't even remember getting, it was all worth it. Gah. It's such a cliche to say "worth it" but gdmn, it really was.
It's funny though. There were a lot of things going around my head; I felt dizzy, but i was sure it wasn't from the height. It was more of how fragile all of this is.
5:30~ish: Started the descent.
6:00 PM: Started cooking dinner and readying the bonfire.
7:00 PM: Lights out. By this time, Sunday, we were the only ones left at the campsite - most of the other campers had already left earlier during the day. Our bonfire was the only for a good stretch of beach. We were alone again.
Dinner was made - a bunch of hotdogs roasted on an open flame, two sets of broth and a heaping pot of rice. One of the most delicious food i've ever tasted. Granted though, a lot of it was dipped in sand, but it was still crazy delicious nonetheless.
7:30 PM: Heard some rumbling in the distance, and even the soft pitter-patter of rain out in the forest. Thought we'd have to take shelter in our tents, but after a few hours the clouds moved and the stars appeared.
8:00~4:00 AM: Drank beer. The conversation was like the night; it went deeper and deeper the longer the night grew. Truth be told, most of the conversation escapes me now, but what i can't forget was the way the stars looked at us as we looked at them. I read somewhere that the lights coming from the stars are ages past - it's only just now that the lights reach our tiny little planet. It must mean that all this time, we were looking at a sky full of ghosts.
At around 1 in the morning, this guy with a camera comes ambling from another campsite. He introduces himself (wait, whoa, i don't think he did) and mentions that he's making a sort of promo for this other campsite. He asks us which part of the city we come from, and my alarm bells go off. Who are youuu, mofo. Jani was dozing off at the time, and i don't think he was really meaning to, but he made a show of accidentally stepping on Jani's leg.
The caretakers from our campsite decided to step in then and chase him out for our security. Creep left without a fight, but the caretakers decided to stay around our area. It's all good and all, but the thing is, even the caretakers were drunk as well. After the creep left, one of them started declaring that he loved each and every one of us, and he'll protect us with his fists until the end. We took it as a sign to pack up our things and crawl back into our tents. I parked myself on the lawnchair and dozed off looking at the stars.
8:00 AM. Woke up with a certain soreness one would expect from spending the breezy and cold night on a lawnchair. I saw that some of the campers were packing up - the boat that would take us island hopping was also the boat home. From our previous conversations with the site owner, I knew that the boat would return after a while and take us on the next trip.
So it came to such a surprise when the boatman suddenly asked us to ready our things. Sobrang lugi daw kasi if ever babalikan pa kami sa nagsasa. We all glanced at each other - Shan was opening a can of luncheon meat. Bren was asleep. Fess was talking with the boatman. Jani and I were tending the fire and rice. We dropped all that we were doing and rushed to get things ready. I caught up with Shan at the bathoom - we both wanted and needed a shower. We looked at each other, shrugged and "wag na kaya tayong maligo?" before quickly just jumping into the stall to change our clothes.
When I got back to our campsite, there was a mad scramble going on. People kept darting in and out of the tent to make sure nothing was missing. Shan quickly chopped the luncheon meat and placed them into our cooked rice (godbless you, pot of rice, for cooking so quickly). Bren and Jani were loading up the things in the boat. Fessa was setting up her tripod for one last picture with the campsite's sign. After a quick snapshot here and there, we were gone and into the boat, wherein it promptly sped up into the horizon. (We kept the family already in the boat waiting for a good 20 mins. But lol KMN. 20 minutes ain't bad, mofo)
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Our first stop was Capones island, just a few miles off the coast of nowhere. There was this huge, old, dilapitated lighthouse that had probably seen use in the last century. Thousands of slippers were awash at the beach, akin to a slipper graveyard. Or maybe a place where lost things wound up?
At one end, a bluff overlooked the ocean while at the other, the lighthouse. We stopped for a bit at the edge, but quickly trudged up to the lighthouse - the heat was searing and literally painful.
My expectations of what the lighthouse looked like from the inside were met when i entered the gate. It was rusty and the paint was peeling of in some places. Vegetation had taken most of the rooms, while the weather and storm had bathed the rest of the place in decay. A well-placed kick could probably unlodge the whole thing together. It was deliciously dangerous and perfect for an adventure.
We made our way up a series of stairs - all rickety and old. Rust was the main coat of the inner rooms and graffitti littered the walls. Each step from the person in front of you could be felt, vibrating like a heartbeat and a message. It was interesting.
Reaching the top was incredible, but the experience was in the ascent. Not to downplay the top, it was still crazy wonderful, but gdmn the ascent was hot and sweaty and musty.
We had to hasten the descent as people were shouting at us from the boat. We had kept them waiting again. :P
We had lunch at the cove next to the lighthouse. The luncheon meat wasn't really cooked, but who cares. The rice was cooked, the sand was white and the sea was clear and inviting. It was good food shared with good company and an awesome view. Incredible.
11:30 AM: Riding the boat back to Pundaquit was a mixed bag. On one hand, i was glad to be back in the world i've known. On the other, the place i left was just so beautiful and uncharted, it was almost painful to leave it. I kept gazing into the distance, wishing the boat would turn around and not lead me back into the world of reports and salaries, but also wishing for the boat to speed up and take us home.
12:00 PM: Back at Pundaquit, the first thing i did was to find a store to buy a bottle of Mountain Dew. Good thing the store had a bottle that was ice-cold. I uncapped the top, letting that *fizz sound engulf us all on the hot beach. I drank deeply, letting the fizz tickle my throat.
12:30 PM: By this time, i was riding inside the trike again, but this time, I had the front all to myself and all the bags. I kept looking at the road - more of there really was nothing else to do but look at the road - and how it gradually evolves back into concrete. I passed the river we waded into last Saturday morning, and it wasn't as overflowing anymore. It had receded quietly into the background of simple provincial life, and there were even kids playing and wading into the water.
2:20 PM: At around this time, we were at the Olongapo station already and boarding the bus that would take us home to the jungle we have known for all our lives.
I sat down at the bus next to Shan. I looked down at my feet - a minute ago, they were practically crusted in sand and swaddled in dirt. Now, they were pretty clean (i had taken some time in the bathroom) and were now quite chilly from the airconditioning at the bus. I wiggled them, and was suddenly reminded of the way i wiggled them, a few days before at the beach. I was right at the shoreline, where the waves met the sand, and i had just dug my toes into the soft sand.
Nagsasa has brown and white sand. In some parts, the brown was thicker than the white, and with each crashing of the waves into the shore, it created an interesting pattern on the shoreline. The water would drag the white and leave out the brown, so it created a sort of aurora-like thing on the shoreline. It was like looking into the rice terraces from a bird's point of view, cascading and twisting into amazing and beautiful shapes.
I think it'd be one of the things i'd miss the most.
6:00 PM: Touchdown MNL. Fess had alighted earlier - she was the only one from the North who made it. The rest of us that remained grabbed a cab and dropped off Bren at BlueWave and Jani at Coastal Terminal. I waited with Shan at the intersection to wait for her Las Pinas bus, all the while feeling like my arms were made of paper.
"Worth it ba, Shan?" I asked her, staring into the distance. I knew she knew what i was talking about.
"Siyempre naman." She replied, glancing at me. She peered back into the distance to check if the incoming bus was the one she needed. "Worth it."
Yep. Indeed it was.
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