Inambakan Falls, Ginatilan, Cebu

You don’t always find yourself with the right people, but the most important thing is that you always find yourself. Find yourself, Google it if you have to. I’m rarely serious with blogging because I take it like a George Carlin stand-up: I know it means a lot but I can’t take it too seriously. But this is the one thing that I have felt so strongly lately. Just hang on to yourself and you’ll eventually find the right crowd.

On a completely irrelevant connotation of the word, crowd could mean anything. A crowd of people, a crowd of cars, a crowd of thoughts. A crowd of water, probably. No matter what kind of crowd it is, it’s always noisy. But the noise of a waterfall is something that lulls one to sleep. The randomness of meaningless noise and the fear of drowning that it creates…it’s when fear and beauty are difficult to distinguish. It’s like a train crash that perpetually recurs.

Inambakan Falls is the most beautiful in Cebu. It is located in Ginatilan, Cebu, a town that rests quietly 136 kilometers south of Cebu City. To get to the falls, one must right a habal-habal from the town center. Riding a habal-habal is both a prayer and a convenience, but there’s no other way to get from Ginatilan to Inambakan.

Unless of course you are willing to endure a 4-hour walk in a non-scenic barangay road. The fare was around 60, I’m not really sure. Somebody paid for me in exchange for taking them to that place. I guess this is something a lot of my readers don’t know yet. I get little perks for being a tour guide to places I’ve never been to. I’m that good at guessing, I guess.

Gloomy and Happy

I don’t want to do monthly posting. This isn’t a high-end glossy magazine. I want to update like at least once a week. But lately, I’ve been confined to my room. The only break I had recently was the Cebu-Argao bicycle ride I had and the beach outing I had at Alcoy with my workmates.

Whenever I go to the beach, I always have two worries: sunburn and drowning. I haven’t figured out yet which I worry more about, probably drowning because it can’t be prevented by sun block. But I forgot to include huge, sharp corals in my things-to-watch-out-for list. Here’s the scenario, if you do care.

We went to the Barangay Beach in Alcoy. And a little far off from the shore is a floating cottage, the way to which is a rigorous swim against the time or a breezy ride at the raft which you can be pulled back and forth (see photos if you lack imagination). It’s really fun to dive from the floating cottage. But before I dove, the cautious guy that I am, I made sure that it was deep enough. What I didn’t check out was if there were some corals jutting out in some places. I found a bit too late. I wouldn’t have stopped jumping off that floating cottage because it was so fun but my chest kept bleeding. Luckily it wasn’t my head. The pain is only skin-deep, but it stings.

It was rainy the following morning but the tide was so high it reached the highway. I’m kidding. But it was really so high that it’s like water world (without the fear of dehydration and not finding land). It was so beautiful. Imagine being in a world with nothing but water but it’s not entirely that because you can just walk back to your cottage and eat and drink and sleep. Paradise is just hell minus its consequences.

I’m chatting with my Facebook friends while making this entry so I’m kindah lost. I’m not paying attention. So, here’s just what I’d like you to know when you go there: on the other side of the cottage the sea suddenly becomes so deep. It’s somewhat like an underwater cliff down there. The water is good but don’t dare if you can’t swim because drowning is not poetic, fun, or heroic. You only have one death, choose wisely.

Yeah, I’m Beach-y

To all the readers who still ask me about my blog, I thank you all (this is so high school declamation tone..haha). I’ve been so booked lately with moving in to a different place and taking care of our house, which is currently unoccupied because my family has moved back to Bukidnon. Also, the internet connection is very discouraging in the most literal and heart-breaking way.

Have you ever waited for the result of a final interview, procrastinating whether you got the job or not? That time between waiting and knowing the verdict is how slow my Smart Bro connection is. For someone who relies on photos (nobody reads this blog, people just check the photos), it’s awfully discouraging.

But as promised, I’m back to share about my other beach trip. I’m being so beachy lately. I swim like I’m fighting for my life the whole time but I still love to do it. I mean, sometimes it’s just so awesome to try so hard to do something that you’re not likely to accomplish anytime soon.

This post is about our trip with my sister and her husband and the entire family and The Boss. We went to Pandanon and Nalusuan, ferried by Island Bancas, which is, quite predictably, operated by Island Souvenirs. This is actually more of an island hopping / snorkeling thing but there’s still some seawater and sand involved so I’m sticking with the title.

The jumpoff point is near Movenpick, which people still refer to as Hilton Hotel. We boarded this huge banca (it’s a boat that looks like a catamaran and if you’re a Filipino you wouldn’t have a hard time imagining what that is). The banca can fit around 15 people, excluding the crew. I don’t know, I’m not sure. I’m a bike guy, not a boat guy. Anyway, the trip to Pandanon is like 45 minutes away from jump off. There isn’t much there save for the nice beach.

I like Nalusuan better because it had all these lovely corals and fishes and the underwater looks like a commercial for some NatGeo show or some tourism advertisement. There’s just so many fishes, it makes me wonder why the fish we had for lunch is still expensive as hell. Yeah, I get it. The fish we ate for lunch was bought somewhere else and brought to the island where there’s so much fish so that we don’t eat the more good looking ones. It’s quite apparent that the more good-looking ones do have a survival/evolutionary edge.

I’m getting tired of all this so just check out the photos and the website for Island Bancas for details about the pricing for Nalusuan and Pandanon. I'm not endorsing, I'm just being lazy. Peace! By the way, trips to both islands is not exclusively offered by Island Bancas. You can swim all the way there or check out some other tour boats.

There’s a lot of Koreans in the island so don’t be surprised. One almost drowned me by bringing a very long rope and I got tangled in it while I was swimming. I’m not saying they’re all bad. But that specific guy is just a moron. who would bring a 15-foot rope while swimming? Does he assume that he’ll not drown if he does not sink beyond 15 feet? So much for that. You guys have a great time, thanks for dropping by.

Bromance in orange.

You won't get board here.

 

Panglao--Sort of

I want a corkboard. A corkboard, in a way, is better than memories. It’s capacity is limited but it does not forget. I want a clock for everybody I know who lives in a different time zone. When it comes to time, my mental perception is a monochrome. Although I am aware of it, I could not imagine how it could be daytime where my sister lives and it’s night time here.

Time zones are something that I have to be more mindful of now that I am located in one and living in another. Yes, I am now working in a contact center. A few of my friends detest me for this. Before, I never considered this as a career option, although it has always my pool of happiness, friends, and beer (thanks to the kind sponsors in the industry). But now that I am at the heart of the BPO industry (call centers being the core BPO), I would not say it’s not as bad as people from the outside think. The trick is to end up with a compensating company and be with good people. I create my own experience, choose my company. I don’t mind being alone as long as I don’t have to vomit my guts out or drain my hard-earned money in fancy stuff. The bottom line: it’s an honest job and there are actually a lot of times that you can make strangers feel better…feel that somebody actually cares about their trouble even if he is paid to do it.

Life, for the past two months, has been a series of beaches. I want to start with some photos from Panglao, Bohol a couple of weeks ago and I’ll try (will really make an honest effort to) blog about the rest.

Driving around Panglao

For starters, Panglao is not a very big island. It is connected to Bohol mainland by two low bridges. The island tilts northeast, with three main roads cutting through it. You can actually just count them as two: the peripheral road that circles the island and the one that cuts through it. I wouldn’t say the peripheral road is a coastal road because you barely see any coast while circling the island. The best thing about driving around Panglao is the lack of any form of traffic. There might be slower vehicles along the way but they are very few and you can easily get pass them because there is barely anybody else out there on the road. Just have to be mindful of dogs, pedestrians, and occasional cyclists. The road condition is great because there aren’t a lot of big cargo trucks that go around Panglao. There’s barely any other industry aside from tourism.

Transportation

Four-wheeled vehicles and motorbikes are the main transportation in the island. You can get somebody to drive you or just rent a motorbike, it’s cheaper and more practical if you’re not bringing your closet around with you when you go around the island. Tricycles are also an option. These are motorbikes with bungalow-size sidecars on the right. They’re only great though for short-distance transport when you got a lot of bags with you and you think motorbikes aren’t the safest transpo on earth. Panglao tricycles only allow four passengers at most (two on the side and two at the back of the driver).

Would I recommend Panglao?

Panglao is the jump-off point for Balicasag, a world-class diving site. Go there if you want to see some of the most amazing underwater stuff in the planet at a much lesser price than Palawan. (I did not go diving, I don’t know how to but my in-law did for like all the time he was there for two weeks). Many people (foreign people, mostly) also go there for the beaches and pool resorts. For those who grew up in snowy places with barely any sun, Panglao is a treasure. But for beaches and just getting sunburnt, I would recommend Siquijor or Camotes. They are cheaper and their beaches are better than the renowned Alona Beach in Panglao. I didn't take beach photos there. I've seen better places. Alona though is a great place to have the calm kind of beach partying. It’s also a great place to meet cool people and just bask in the sun with your two-piece suit without shame. You can be fat, old, or hot…nobody will mind you (maybe if you are hot there will be). I mean, it’s not like some places where the fat and older ones are jeered for wearing a swimsuit. They have as much right as anybody does to wear whatever they want at the most appropriate places.