Dates of travel: March 27-30, 2013
On a Bus
I am no stranger to the road to Bicol. Back in college, I'd travel on this road by bus on school breaks to get to my hometown in Samar. I dreaded those trips because they meant spending 24 hours seated beside a stranger (two hours of which was actually on a boat that ferried us from Matnog in Sorsogon to Allen in Northern Samar).
That was more than a decade ago. A lot has happened since then - Friendster switched to being a gaming platform. MySpace ... well, Justin Timberlake happened to MySpace. Multiply recently switched to being an e-commerce platform, then announced that they're completely shutting down, Nokia was ousted as the leading mobile phone manufacturer, Newsweek went out of print ...
I could go on and on, but my point is, less than two decades feels like a lifetime ago. Aside from the radical evolution of the web and everything else, I've also started appreciating long bus rides. The web and Newsweek going out of print and my appreciation for long bus rides are in no way related, and I will not deconstruct anything just so I can relate them.
Anyway, the trip to Daet, in my book, isn't long because it only takes at least six hours ('could take eight to 10 depending on your luck). It's a short trip for a complete night's sleep but long for a nap. So, my bus ride to Daet during the Holy Week was spent chatting with Grace, about you know, changes (so maybe changes and bus rides are related after all). But mostly, it was spent anticipating a certain town in Quezon (because rumors had it that that's where we were stopping over for a toilet break).
On a Truck
The truck ride was reminiscent of a provincial Girl Scout camping event in second year high school when we were transported from my hometown to Calbiga (about an hour away) and back on trucks. Photos courtesy of Paul Tamisin Garcia
When we reached Daet, we had our day mapped out --we'd surf in the morning, rest, do a very laid-back tour of the town, then head out to Calaguas the next day when our Gawad Kalinga volunteer friends were ready to bail. Mapped out it was, till Lois, who is a GK volunteer, talked us into joining the closing ceremonies of the GK Bayani Challenge. Grace and I had been convinced it would be a bad idea since we had just come in from a sleepless bus ride, and we had made arrangements with surfing instructors to hit the beach that morning. But then, Lois mentioned "free lunch." Naturally, she had us at "free." So, we changed from our rashguards and were whisked away on a truck from Daet to San Lorenzo Ruiz and Basud.
Getting off the truck was the tricky part. Photo courtesy of Paul Tamisin Garcia
This was free lunch- boodle fight with chicken adobo and laing. This was the first and so far only laing I've had in Bicol, so I guess that makes it the only legit laing I've tried. It was several notches above the canned laing we buy from the grocery, that much I can say.
Hanna, Paul, and Lois doing the Gawad Kalinga Unity dance. They're addicted to it, by the way.
On a Board
You remember Bodhi's lines (Patrick Swayze's character in "Point Break") I told you about in a previous post? The part where he tells Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves's character), " "Feel what the wave is doing, then accept its energy. Get in sync, then charge with it. You don't need to see" ? Well, that's exactly what one of the surfing instructors told me to do when dealing with whitewater waves.
Okay, maybe not exactly. He told me that I should prop myself up two to three seconds after the wave starts rushing down. When I asked him how I know when that starts happening, he told me, "Pakiramdaman mo lang." So maybe it wasn't as poetic as Bodhi put it, but it's the same idea, right?
My second instructor took a different approach. And by different, I meant mean. He thought I was ready to catch unbroken waves, and so brought me to a deeper part of the ocean. This was of course after our conversation with me warning him that I'm a non-swimmer and him reassuring me that he used to be David Hasselhoff (read: a Baywatch guy). I ended up nose-diving most of the time anyway despite him telling me that with unbroken waves I have to get up immediately.
Oh well, more for next time.
We observed that surfing instructors in Bagasbas tend to be more thorough and more technical (and more expensive at P400 an hour) compared to the guys in Baler. We also noticed that the sense of exclusivity of the surfing culture in Baler seems absent in Daet. Photos courtesy of Paul Tamisin Garcia
Photos courtesy of Paul Tamisin Garcia
Of course, this trip ended with a bus ride back to Manila. But it wouldn't be as dramatic as ending it with a ride on the waves, would it?
Labels: Bagasbas Beach, Camarines Norte, Daet, Surfing
