In an episode of that brilliant TV show My Name is Earl, Earl and his brother Randy find themselves tied to a chair, calling for karma--the force they believe makes "good things happen to good people"--and wondering why it's failed them when they've been doing only good things. And that's when they get saved, by a motley bunch of immigrants wondering why Earl didn't come to class. "Look, Earl," Randy says, "It's Karma's Army. Made up of people from all the lands of all the worlds."
And that's how I feel, sometimes, signing up as a volunteer with VSO. I've been in-country in Guyana for almost two weeks now, and I've still adequately to explain to most people what it is I've left hearth and home and career for, or why I did it. (Or even where.)
So why am I here? Quite simply: the world is broken in some places, and everyone plays a part in fixing it, or breaking it up some more, or maybe standing around bellyaching about it. Most of us try to be good and to do good in our own contexts most days, which is about all that we can really expect from anyone. Now, I've always been curious about the wide and wonderful world out there, so I thought it only fair that I should serve in that same wide and wonderful world if I was going to be dragging my muddy boots all over it.
As luck would have it, VSO recruits in only two countries in Asia, and one of them is the Philippines. So, fast forward a year-and-some later, and here I am. In Guyana. Being a volunteer.
More on my own work later, but I'd like to talk a little bit more about the other VSOs here. If there's anything immediately rewarding about the experience, it's the sense of being part of an international effort to make things better on the ground. It does a lot for your belief in humanity as a whole when you see all kinds of people, of different nationalities, of different backgrounds and ages and races and personalities, all wanting to do something about the many kinds of brokenness, big and small, all over the world. There are many different motivations for doing volunteer work, and not all these reasons are altogether altruistic. And certainly not all volunteers are these great, noble persons with big, noble intentions all the time. (I mean, look at me, for instance.) But if there's one common answer to why these people are doing the work that they're doing, it's that they can. They can do it. so they do it.
The diversity of the other volunteers is pretty amazing. You've got people in their 20s, students putting in some time here while working on their university degrees, all the way to retirees in their 50s, 60s, and even 70s (that would be Mira Howard, 72, who volunteers with the Ministry of Education and who dances to Elvis like nobody's business). We've got teachers, medical professionals, development workers, and the odd person or two working on things like agriculture, research, or in my case, communication and media.
Let me make a few things clear. I'm not doing this because I feel a big, overriding urge to save the world. I certainly feel no guilt at doing well for myself, or for never going hungry, or for not being denied the opportunities the world has to offer. This isn't that. This is simply that I can do something with my time and my skills, and so I'd like to be able to share it outside of my usual world. And so here I am.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Shark Tales (Malapascua, Cebu)
MALAPASCUA ADVENTURES
The Arbert was riding six- to seven-foot crests, its heavy bow rising and crashing mightily with every wave. The seawater would occasionally wash over us sitting in the open deck, even as the rain flew straight into our faces. The roiling sea underneath, white rain from above: these times remind you that the world is mostly water.
Sure, this was not a smooth boat ride, but then again—this entire trip is about adventure, no? We had braved the unseasonably rough passage because we were there to swim with sharks, hunt manta rays, look for shipwrecks. Not for nothing was the resort we were headed to called Malapascua Exotic Dive Resort.
The crew of the Arbert were grinning, perched on the outriggers and holding on to the masts. They would occasionally whoop when their ship rode high, pointing to the island in our sights. Caloy, cool as a cucumber, leaned over and said calmly, “Malapascua doesn’t look like it’s getting any nearer, is it?”
THINGS STARTED TO LOOK UP AS SOON AS WE ARRIVED. Malapascua, an hour away by boat from Maya town, north of the Cebu mainland, was at the tail-end of a weeklong spate of bad weather. The amihan—the northeastern monsoon—was blowing in, heightened by the La Niña weather phenomenon. And yet, as the Arbert’s dinghy pulled in to Malapascua’s long beach, the status of the island as a veritable beach paradise seemed safe.
Even in the gloomy weather, Malapascua was abundantly beautiful. The wide expanse of white sand on Bounty Beach remained clean and uncrowded, even as there are a good number of cottages and resorts up and down the beachfront. The red-and-white international symbol for divers can be found everywhere, but it bears remembering that the first resort on the island, the Bounty Beach Cocobana Resort, wasn’t a dive resort. Between the fine white sand, the clear tropical waters, and the colorful coral reefs just off the shore, the original appeal of Malapascua remains easily seen.
Diving became a full-fledged industry with the entry of Malapascua Exotic Dive and Beach Resort in 1997. Dik and Deoscora de Boer, owners of Exotic and the two people who may have well be responsible for discovering and developing Malapascua’s potential as a world-class dive resort, are still around. Just ten short years ago, they had come to Malapascua as tourists, diving the waters around the island and asking the local fishermen for tips.
They were pointed to a nondescript site, 45 minutes away by boat from Malapascua, where the fish were teeming, and the occasional shark could be seen jumping—jumping!—on the surface. Dik and his friend Mikael Persson dove the site, now known as Monad Shoal, and discovered something that put Malapascua indelibly on the map: a site to spot the amazing and rare thresher shark.
Today, thresher sharks can be seen everywhere on the island—on t-shirts, on all kinds of signage, painted on the sides of boats, on postcards, on logos. Malapascua and Monad Shoal have been featured on National Geographic, precisely because of the thresher sharks.
Threshers are so rarely seen because they are shy deep-water creatures, easily spooked and not interested in coming close to humans. It is the extremely long upper lobe of their tail fin—a unique, whip-like structure which grows up to a third of their full body length—that distinguishes the thresher shark. (See sidebar for more information on the thresher sharks.)
Most divers have a checklist of underwater creatures they want to see during their lives, and at the top of mine for many years is the manta ray. With wingspans of up to 30 feet, mantas must be awe-inspiring to see underwater, gracefully flying like prehistoric birds in the blue. Luckily for me, Malapascua is also known for manta sightings—in the same spot as threshers, in fact.
Threshers only come up to the top of Monad Shoal in the early morning, so it was off to bed before 9pm. Towards the middle of Bounty Beach are other dive resorts and more bars, for divers and tourists who want more nighttime action. Exotic, however, was nicely located near the end of Bounty Beach, just ten minutes’ walk from the center, but also far enough away to afford seclusion and quiet when you want. And so, a good meal and a warming shot of Goldschlager later, and it was off to a deep and peaceful slumber.
I woke up six hours later, realizing with a start that I’d nearly missed the 5am wakeup call for the early thresher shark dive. Some say that it’s the divers first boat of the day that gets the threshers, but the well-researched literature from Exotic maintains that this is not true. There is never any guarantee for thresher shark sightings, but if there’s any dive resort who knows how to get you there, it’s Exotic. They’ve played host to many professional documentary filmmakers, in fact, including Emmy Award-winning National Geographic filmmaker Jonathan Bird, whose Sharks of the Ocean Desert and Jonathan Bird’s Blue World were partly shot at Malapascua Exotic, and British television personality Monty Hall, who featured both threshers and Exotic’s house reef project on Monty Hall’s Great Ocean Adventures, shown on Animal Planet.
The sea has calmed down a little, although it is still cold, and there is a light drizzle as we set out. There are five determined divers on this dive—two women, three men; British, Swedish, Belgian, Japanese, Filipino; ranging in age from early 20s to late 40s. Diving is a democratic pursuit, not discriminating among age, race, or sex.
On the pre-dive briefing on the boat, the divemaster tells us that Monad Shoal is a “sunken island,” an underwater plateau about 19m (60 feet) on top, with its sides that drop off to at least 250m down. Thresher sharks come up from the deep water to the plateau, not to hunt or feed, but to get themselves cleaned by wrasse fish that live in those shallower depths. We were to dive straight down to the plateau, find a good, quiet spot to settle, and then wait for the sharks. Forty-five minutes on the bottom (over an hour for the nitrox divers), then up we go.
It takes a while for it to sink in: in no other place on earth is this possible. Thresher sharks have been spotted all over the world, but so far, this is the only spot identified where divers can watch for them with some regularity.
We descended slowly, found our spot not too far from near the edge of the shoal, and watched. The water was a little silty from the past week’s rains, but otherwise everything was calm and easy. We each stared out into the blue beyond, hoping that each dark shape would materialize into a shark.
When it happened, I thought it was a dream. First a blur in the blue-gray water, a silhouette that came closer and closer, until the shape became a shark. The bubbles from our tanks suddenly came out in trickles, everyone breathing slowly so as not to frighten it away. The thresher came straight at us, fluidly and gracefully, before taking a slow turn to follow a path right in front of us.
This thresher was about two meters from nose to tail, its long caudal fin swishing behind it. Usually it would use that fin to stun its prey or to propel itself out of the water like a dolphin, but right then the thresher was peacefully swimming while the cleaner wrasse kept up underneath and at its tail. The thresher wasn’t fearsome at all—it had a blunt nose, more like a dolphin than other sharks; and a small mouth—but it was still completely awe-inspiring. You never forget your first sighting of a thresher, I was told, and it was true. This whole underwater scene was surreal—nothing I’ve ever seen before, and nothing like it in the world.
We spotted the same thresher twice, swimming back and forth with the wrasses, before our divemaster signaled us to come and position ourselves on another point on Monad, in the hopes of sighting another one.
It was a busy day on the shoal—five minutes in and another shark, larger this time, also came in from the edge of the shoal. It was a little bit more shy, and disappeared quickly back into the blue after its initial parade in front of us.
After waiting in vain for it to return, our divemaster decided to bring us back to our original position, to see if we could push our luck and spot any more sharks. We settled down nearer the edge of the shoal, where the pull of the current was a little stronger. I let my knee down near where a lobster was looking at me suspiciously with its eyes. I was still looking down at it when my dive buddy tugged at my BCD urgently. There! Look!
It was the thresher we’d spotted before, still swimming following its well-documented triangular pattern over the shoal. If it saw us, it didn’t seem to mind. This thresher swam back and forth a few more times before our divemaster signaled that it was time to surface.
The wind had picked up again while we were underwater, and it was somewhat of a challenge getting back on the heaving boat. We were all shivering by the time we all scuttled back into the safety of the cabin, but everyone’s spirits were running high. “That makes up for the six dives I had without sighting any sharks!” said Richard, A British man who had been in Malapascua for the past two weeks. This was his second time to spot threshers, after a weeklong drought. Tanaka, from Japan, was scheduled to leave the island right after breakfast, and he had just squeezed in this dive. He was grinning from ear to ear as he sat, stoically, in a t-shirt and shorts as the rest of us tried to bridge the language gaps through our chattering teeth. Nothing like a shared experience of wonder to bring everyone together.
“THRESHER SHARK DIVING EVERY MORNING.” a dive instructor would tell me later when I asked him for his picture of an ideal diving vacation in Malapascua. But besides Monad Shoal, there are a wealth of diving sites to explore around Malapascua and its surrounding islands.
My next dive would be with Cora de Boer, the gracious owner of Malapascua Exotic, who offered to show me their award-winning house reef. The weather by then had eased up, and the sun finally came out. The sea was flat, and up and down the shore, you could see dive groups setting out.
Just a short five-minute ride away from shore, the Exotic house reef has won awards for the diverse marine life it hosts. There are a number of steel structures submerged to serve as artificial reefs, providing both shelter for the fish, and as a point around which new corals will form. A “photographer’s paradise,” this was called, and true enough, two of the divers with us brought along cameras. The site was also only about 12m at its deepest, so there was plenty of light to allow us to enjoy the color and the life the reef had to offer.
This site was a veritable playground for divers of all skill levels. Hardly any current, and lots of things to see—among them a jeepney, now settled on the bottom as a jaunty, very Pinoy artificial reef. Look inside, and instead of people seated shoulder-to-shoulder, we saw glass fish and a huge school of colorful cardinal fish, resting in the quiet of the jeep’s interior, and looking at the passing divers with little concern.
Sweeper fish, filefish, lion fish, and even large soles hiding on the sandy bottom, even a rare sighting of a ghost pipefish hiding near the entrance of one of the structures; and there was coral, too, of course. An easy dive, and those lucky enough to take their Open Water certification dives here would be rewarded by an easy but very interesting dive.
Matthew Rutherford, the resident dive instructor at Bantigue Cove Resort, raves about some of the sites open to divers from Malapascua. The perfect three-day vacation, he says, would start off at 5am every day with a dive at Monad Shoal. On Day 1, this would be followed by a dive off the Bantigue house reef, a trip out to the Galliano site, and then capped off by a night dive at the Lighthouse. Day 2 would include a day’s excursion out to the Doña Marilyn shipwreck, a stop at Gato Island, and perhaps a stop back at Monad to watch for manta rays. Then take it easy on the third day: diving and picnics at Calanggaman, and then a night dive at Bantigue.
Matt and his wife Juliet, who manages Bantigue Cove, have lived in Malapascua for about two years now—and plan, they say, to stay at least three years more. Even in their short time here, they’ve managed to acquire some unforgettable stories, just from their dive trips: there was someone who asked him to take footage of the Doña Marilyn wreck, because one of his parents had died in the 1988 tragedy that took hundreds of lives. Wreck dives are creepy up to a point—to see something familiar now underwater, hallways now topsy-turvy, leading up to nowhere—but to be asked to film a parent’s death trap…well.
The polar opposite of this tragic story happened just last January, on Monad. A man proposed to his fiancée underwater, and Matt was there to record the happy event. He showed us a copy of the video, and there it is, a silent underwater movie: the man getting down on one knee on the sandy shoal, interrupted by the arrival of a manta ray. The camera follows the manta’s flight, before focusing again on the happy couple. The man shifts his weight to his other knee, before signing, “I love you.” He pulls out a platinum ring with three diamonds, wrapped in fishing net to keep it from floating away. She reacts as if she were on the surface, hands flying to her mouth before she cocks her head to one side in astonishment and joy. She takes the ring, nods her assent, and they pull the regulators out of their mouths and kiss.
YOU CAN DIVE ALL DAY, IF YOU LIKE. But there are limits to the amount of nitrogen your tissues can absorb. Fortunately, however, Malapascua has lots to offer the beach-lover, so that the surface interval was not the chore it could normally be.
After any dive, you can take your boat to circle the island, which, only about 2.5 km long and 1 km wide, can be circumnavigated in less than half an hour on an outrigger. Take it on foot, and it will take only two hours to get back to where you started.
Bounty Beach is the island’s busiest stretch, along the southeastern shore of Malapascua. There are a number of resorts on the beach, to cater to every stripe of tourist. Among these are the Cocobana Beach Resort, owned by Freddy Krummenmacher, which was the first to open shop in 1992. That, along with the Blue Water resort, which followed it a few years later, are the island’s pioneering resorts. They still remain favorites among the burgeoning number of resorts on the island, testament to their commitment to good service.
Travelers looking for top-of-the-line amenities can go to the unique Mangrove Oriental, tucked away in a cove fifteen minutes away from Bounty Beach. To hear her tell it, owner Josephine Macazo put up the resort almost by accident, at the behest of her children. “First they said they wanted a beach house to relax in…and that’s where it all started,” Josephine says, mock-seriously. Only in its fourth season of serving guests, today the Mangrove Oriental is the island’s most luxurious resort, with eight beach cottages and of course, three themed hillside villas: the island-themed Banyan cottage; the Kasbah, a Moroccan-inspired honeymoon suite; and the African-influenced Safari family cottage. As of this writing, there is a dormitory building being finished up, to accommodate large groups.
But then, it’s almost beside the point to book at the Mangrove Oriental and not stay in one of the sumptuous villas. The Kasbah is probably the most popular, made up to be a honeymooners’ private getaway. The high-ceilinged cottage is done up in cool terracotta shades inside and out, with the intricately designed dark wooden furniture from Mindanao. Most importantly, however, there is a private roofdeck from which one can peek out at the sea or look out to the stars.
If your idea of a perfect beach holiday is romantic isolation, then there is Bantigue Cove on the northern side of Malapascua. At least fifteen minutes away by motorcycle from Bounty Beach, Bantigue offers more privacy and more quiet than the resorts on the long beach. Favored by honeymooners and by families, Bantigue is the very essence of a rustic island getaway.
No matter where you stay, though, Malapascua opens opportunities for the same activities for travelers. Diving, of course, and island-hopping, snorkeling, kayaking—or, for the more laid-back beachgoer, simply swimming and sunbathing. Ironically for such a tiny island, there is simply too much to do, too much to fit into a one trip. “You’ll keep coming back,” is often the admonition that meets the first-time visitor, and more often than not, it is true.
The edited version of this story was previously published as the cover story in SEAir's Inflight magazine, April-May 2008 issue
The Arbert was riding six- to seven-foot crests, its heavy bow rising and crashing mightily with every wave. The seawater would occasionally wash over us sitting in the open deck, even as the rain flew straight into our faces. The roiling sea underneath, white rain from above: these times remind you that the world is mostly water.
Sure, this was not a smooth boat ride, but then again—this entire trip is about adventure, no? We had braved the unseasonably rough passage because we were there to swim with sharks, hunt manta rays, look for shipwrecks. Not for nothing was the resort we were headed to called Malapascua Exotic Dive Resort.
The crew of the Arbert were grinning, perched on the outriggers and holding on to the masts. They would occasionally whoop when their ship rode high, pointing to the island in our sights. Caloy, cool as a cucumber, leaned over and said calmly, “Malapascua doesn’t look like it’s getting any nearer, is it?”
THINGS STARTED TO LOOK UP AS SOON AS WE ARRIVED. Malapascua, an hour away by boat from Maya town, north of the Cebu mainland, was at the tail-end of a weeklong spate of bad weather. The amihan—the northeastern monsoon—was blowing in, heightened by the La Niña weather phenomenon. And yet, as the Arbert’s dinghy pulled in to Malapascua’s long beach, the status of the island as a veritable beach paradise seemed safe.
Even in the gloomy weather, Malapascua was abundantly beautiful. The wide expanse of white sand on Bounty Beach remained clean and uncrowded, even as there are a good number of cottages and resorts up and down the beachfront. The red-and-white international symbol for divers can be found everywhere, but it bears remembering that the first resort on the island, the Bounty Beach Cocobana Resort, wasn’t a dive resort. Between the fine white sand, the clear tropical waters, and the colorful coral reefs just off the shore, the original appeal of Malapascua remains easily seen.
Diving became a full-fledged industry with the entry of Malapascua Exotic Dive and Beach Resort in 1997. Dik and Deoscora de Boer, owners of Exotic and the two people who may have well be responsible for discovering and developing Malapascua’s potential as a world-class dive resort, are still around. Just ten short years ago, they had come to Malapascua as tourists, diving the waters around the island and asking the local fishermen for tips.
They were pointed to a nondescript site, 45 minutes away by boat from Malapascua, where the fish were teeming, and the occasional shark could be seen jumping—jumping!—on the surface. Dik and his friend Mikael Persson dove the site, now known as Monad Shoal, and discovered something that put Malapascua indelibly on the map: a site to spot the amazing and rare thresher shark.
Today, thresher sharks can be seen everywhere on the island—on t-shirts, on all kinds of signage, painted on the sides of boats, on postcards, on logos. Malapascua and Monad Shoal have been featured on National Geographic, precisely because of the thresher sharks.
Threshers are so rarely seen because they are shy deep-water creatures, easily spooked and not interested in coming close to humans. It is the extremely long upper lobe of their tail fin—a unique, whip-like structure which grows up to a third of their full body length—that distinguishes the thresher shark. (See sidebar for more information on the thresher sharks.)
Most divers have a checklist of underwater creatures they want to see during their lives, and at the top of mine for many years is the manta ray. With wingspans of up to 30 feet, mantas must be awe-inspiring to see underwater, gracefully flying like prehistoric birds in the blue. Luckily for me, Malapascua is also known for manta sightings—in the same spot as threshers, in fact.
Threshers only come up to the top of Monad Shoal in the early morning, so it was off to bed before 9pm. Towards the middle of Bounty Beach are other dive resorts and more bars, for divers and tourists who want more nighttime action. Exotic, however, was nicely located near the end of Bounty Beach, just ten minutes’ walk from the center, but also far enough away to afford seclusion and quiet when you want. And so, a good meal and a warming shot of Goldschlager later, and it was off to a deep and peaceful slumber.
I woke up six hours later, realizing with a start that I’d nearly missed the 5am wakeup call for the early thresher shark dive. Some say that it’s the divers first boat of the day that gets the threshers, but the well-researched literature from Exotic maintains that this is not true. There is never any guarantee for thresher shark sightings, but if there’s any dive resort who knows how to get you there, it’s Exotic. They’ve played host to many professional documentary filmmakers, in fact, including Emmy Award-winning National Geographic filmmaker Jonathan Bird, whose Sharks of the Ocean Desert and Jonathan Bird’s Blue World were partly shot at Malapascua Exotic, and British television personality Monty Hall, who featured both threshers and Exotic’s house reef project on Monty Hall’s Great Ocean Adventures, shown on Animal Planet.
The sea has calmed down a little, although it is still cold, and there is a light drizzle as we set out. There are five determined divers on this dive—two women, three men; British, Swedish, Belgian, Japanese, Filipino; ranging in age from early 20s to late 40s. Diving is a democratic pursuit, not discriminating among age, race, or sex.
On the pre-dive briefing on the boat, the divemaster tells us that Monad Shoal is a “sunken island,” an underwater plateau about 19m (60 feet) on top, with its sides that drop off to at least 250m down. Thresher sharks come up from the deep water to the plateau, not to hunt or feed, but to get themselves cleaned by wrasse fish that live in those shallower depths. We were to dive straight down to the plateau, find a good, quiet spot to settle, and then wait for the sharks. Forty-five minutes on the bottom (over an hour for the nitrox divers), then up we go.
It takes a while for it to sink in: in no other place on earth is this possible. Thresher sharks have been spotted all over the world, but so far, this is the only spot identified where divers can watch for them with some regularity.
We descended slowly, found our spot not too far from near the edge of the shoal, and watched. The water was a little silty from the past week’s rains, but otherwise everything was calm and easy. We each stared out into the blue beyond, hoping that each dark shape would materialize into a shark.
When it happened, I thought it was a dream. First a blur in the blue-gray water, a silhouette that came closer and closer, until the shape became a shark. The bubbles from our tanks suddenly came out in trickles, everyone breathing slowly so as not to frighten it away. The thresher came straight at us, fluidly and gracefully, before taking a slow turn to follow a path right in front of us.
This thresher was about two meters from nose to tail, its long caudal fin swishing behind it. Usually it would use that fin to stun its prey or to propel itself out of the water like a dolphin, but right then the thresher was peacefully swimming while the cleaner wrasse kept up underneath and at its tail. The thresher wasn’t fearsome at all—it had a blunt nose, more like a dolphin than other sharks; and a small mouth—but it was still completely awe-inspiring. You never forget your first sighting of a thresher, I was told, and it was true. This whole underwater scene was surreal—nothing I’ve ever seen before, and nothing like it in the world.
We spotted the same thresher twice, swimming back and forth with the wrasses, before our divemaster signaled us to come and position ourselves on another point on Monad, in the hopes of sighting another one.
It was a busy day on the shoal—five minutes in and another shark, larger this time, also came in from the edge of the shoal. It was a little bit more shy, and disappeared quickly back into the blue after its initial parade in front of us.
After waiting in vain for it to return, our divemaster decided to bring us back to our original position, to see if we could push our luck and spot any more sharks. We settled down nearer the edge of the shoal, where the pull of the current was a little stronger. I let my knee down near where a lobster was looking at me suspiciously with its eyes. I was still looking down at it when my dive buddy tugged at my BCD urgently. There! Look!
It was the thresher we’d spotted before, still swimming following its well-documented triangular pattern over the shoal. If it saw us, it didn’t seem to mind. This thresher swam back and forth a few more times before our divemaster signaled that it was time to surface.
The wind had picked up again while we were underwater, and it was somewhat of a challenge getting back on the heaving boat. We were all shivering by the time we all scuttled back into the safety of the cabin, but everyone’s spirits were running high. “That makes up for the six dives I had without sighting any sharks!” said Richard, A British man who had been in Malapascua for the past two weeks. This was his second time to spot threshers, after a weeklong drought. Tanaka, from Japan, was scheduled to leave the island right after breakfast, and he had just squeezed in this dive. He was grinning from ear to ear as he sat, stoically, in a t-shirt and shorts as the rest of us tried to bridge the language gaps through our chattering teeth. Nothing like a shared experience of wonder to bring everyone together.
“THRESHER SHARK DIVING EVERY MORNING.” a dive instructor would tell me later when I asked him for his picture of an ideal diving vacation in Malapascua. But besides Monad Shoal, there are a wealth of diving sites to explore around Malapascua and its surrounding islands.
My next dive would be with Cora de Boer, the gracious owner of Malapascua Exotic, who offered to show me their award-winning house reef. The weather by then had eased up, and the sun finally came out. The sea was flat, and up and down the shore, you could see dive groups setting out.
Just a short five-minute ride away from shore, the Exotic house reef has won awards for the diverse marine life it hosts. There are a number of steel structures submerged to serve as artificial reefs, providing both shelter for the fish, and as a point around which new corals will form. A “photographer’s paradise,” this was called, and true enough, two of the divers with us brought along cameras. The site was also only about 12m at its deepest, so there was plenty of light to allow us to enjoy the color and the life the reef had to offer.
This site was a veritable playground for divers of all skill levels. Hardly any current, and lots of things to see—among them a jeepney, now settled on the bottom as a jaunty, very Pinoy artificial reef. Look inside, and instead of people seated shoulder-to-shoulder, we saw glass fish and a huge school of colorful cardinal fish, resting in the quiet of the jeep’s interior, and looking at the passing divers with little concern.
Sweeper fish, filefish, lion fish, and even large soles hiding on the sandy bottom, even a rare sighting of a ghost pipefish hiding near the entrance of one of the structures; and there was coral, too, of course. An easy dive, and those lucky enough to take their Open Water certification dives here would be rewarded by an easy but very interesting dive.
Matthew Rutherford, the resident dive instructor at Bantigue Cove Resort, raves about some of the sites open to divers from Malapascua. The perfect three-day vacation, he says, would start off at 5am every day with a dive at Monad Shoal. On Day 1, this would be followed by a dive off the Bantigue house reef, a trip out to the Galliano site, and then capped off by a night dive at the Lighthouse. Day 2 would include a day’s excursion out to the Doña Marilyn shipwreck, a stop at Gato Island, and perhaps a stop back at Monad to watch for manta rays. Then take it easy on the third day: diving and picnics at Calanggaman, and then a night dive at Bantigue.
Matt and his wife Juliet, who manages Bantigue Cove, have lived in Malapascua for about two years now—and plan, they say, to stay at least three years more. Even in their short time here, they’ve managed to acquire some unforgettable stories, just from their dive trips: there was someone who asked him to take footage of the Doña Marilyn wreck, because one of his parents had died in the 1988 tragedy that took hundreds of lives. Wreck dives are creepy up to a point—to see something familiar now underwater, hallways now topsy-turvy, leading up to nowhere—but to be asked to film a parent’s death trap…well.
The polar opposite of this tragic story happened just last January, on Monad. A man proposed to his fiancée underwater, and Matt was there to record the happy event. He showed us a copy of the video, and there it is, a silent underwater movie: the man getting down on one knee on the sandy shoal, interrupted by the arrival of a manta ray. The camera follows the manta’s flight, before focusing again on the happy couple. The man shifts his weight to his other knee, before signing, “I love you.” He pulls out a platinum ring with three diamonds, wrapped in fishing net to keep it from floating away. She reacts as if she were on the surface, hands flying to her mouth before she cocks her head to one side in astonishment and joy. She takes the ring, nods her assent, and they pull the regulators out of their mouths and kiss.
YOU CAN DIVE ALL DAY, IF YOU LIKE. But there are limits to the amount of nitrogen your tissues can absorb. Fortunately, however, Malapascua has lots to offer the beach-lover, so that the surface interval was not the chore it could normally be.
After any dive, you can take your boat to circle the island, which, only about 2.5 km long and 1 km wide, can be circumnavigated in less than half an hour on an outrigger. Take it on foot, and it will take only two hours to get back to where you started.
Bounty Beach is the island’s busiest stretch, along the southeastern shore of Malapascua. There are a number of resorts on the beach, to cater to every stripe of tourist. Among these are the Cocobana Beach Resort, owned by Freddy Krummenmacher, which was the first to open shop in 1992. That, along with the Blue Water resort, which followed it a few years later, are the island’s pioneering resorts. They still remain favorites among the burgeoning number of resorts on the island, testament to their commitment to good service.
Travelers looking for top-of-the-line amenities can go to the unique Mangrove Oriental, tucked away in a cove fifteen minutes away from Bounty Beach. To hear her tell it, owner Josephine Macazo put up the resort almost by accident, at the behest of her children. “First they said they wanted a beach house to relax in…and that’s where it all started,” Josephine says, mock-seriously. Only in its fourth season of serving guests, today the Mangrove Oriental is the island’s most luxurious resort, with eight beach cottages and of course, three themed hillside villas: the island-themed Banyan cottage; the Kasbah, a Moroccan-inspired honeymoon suite; and the African-influenced Safari family cottage. As of this writing, there is a dormitory building being finished up, to accommodate large groups.
But then, it’s almost beside the point to book at the Mangrove Oriental and not stay in one of the sumptuous villas. The Kasbah is probably the most popular, made up to be a honeymooners’ private getaway. The high-ceilinged cottage is done up in cool terracotta shades inside and out, with the intricately designed dark wooden furniture from Mindanao. Most importantly, however, there is a private roofdeck from which one can peek out at the sea or look out to the stars.
If your idea of a perfect beach holiday is romantic isolation, then there is Bantigue Cove on the northern side of Malapascua. At least fifteen minutes away by motorcycle from Bounty Beach, Bantigue offers more privacy and more quiet than the resorts on the long beach. Favored by honeymooners and by families, Bantigue is the very essence of a rustic island getaway.
No matter where you stay, though, Malapascua opens opportunities for the same activities for travelers. Diving, of course, and island-hopping, snorkeling, kayaking—or, for the more laid-back beachgoer, simply swimming and sunbathing. Ironically for such a tiny island, there is simply too much to do, too much to fit into a one trip. “You’ll keep coming back,” is often the admonition that meets the first-time visitor, and more often than not, it is true.
The edited version of this story was previously published as the cover story in SEAir's Inflight magazine, April-May 2008 issue
The Secrets of Romblon
There are few places in the world where you can stop and have the luxury of choice between two kinds of paradise. This is the sweet problem I had found myself in, having found one such fortunate crossroads just an hour away from Manila. In Caticlan, near the center of the Philippine archipelago, with airplanes and boats and all other manner of transportation at your call—where do you want to go?
It’s all a matter of preference, I suppose: if your idea of a paradise is a long stretch of magnificent white sand, some of the country’s most excellent resorts to cater to your every need, world-class restaurants, and a teeming night life—then, of course, there’s Boracay. But if your taste tends towards the more adventurous, the unknown, the unexplored and untouched, if you are looking for unmanufactured experience—then I’ve got a secret for you.
I admit that I could not also resist the lure of the former: I had lugged my bags over to Bora for the day, visiting my favorite restaurants, sitting down on the white sand to marvel at the beach vista. Unfortunately, Bora is crowded at this time of the year, and the reverie ended when a small group of guys claimed the beach chairs next to me and proceeded to have a long, dopey debate about the relative merits of Manila’s malls.
And this is how I found myself that evening on a two-hour boat ride to Romblon. Pump boats and ferries leave the Caticlan jetty for Tablas Island in the morning and in the evening (although a SEAir flight also goes from Manila to Tablas thrice weekly), and I caught the ferry’s 8pm trip. The ferry’s shuddering motor shook in one direction, while the choppy waves pulled another. There was a storm coming, and the channel we were crossing is reputed to be among the roughest in Philippine waters.
Why go? Earlier, I’d spoken to photographers Justin Ventura and Oyen Bautista, and despite having perhaps dozens of destinations between us, none of us had ever ventured to Romblon, and we all confessed—amazed, more than embarrassed—that none of us had heard much about the place. And therein lay the appeal.
Romblon is a one-district province, part of the MIMAROPA region in the Sibuyan Sea. Romblon province is made up of three islands: Sibuyan Island; Tablas, the largest island; and Romblon Island, where the capital is located. I have vague memories of Romblon’s prominence in the region in the 70s, and another friend remembers the luxury cruises one could take from Manila to Romblon in her childhood. These days are long past, and nowadays even the assistant from whom I bought my ferry tickets expressed her surprise that so many people were going to Romblon.
Two queasy hours later, and I threw my bags down on the pier in Looc town, found in Tablas, the largest of the three Romblon islands. Jojo Madrona, aide to Romblon’s lone Congressman Eleandro Jesus Madrona, promptly found me and introduced himself; minutes later, I was breathing easier on the back of a pickup, rushing through the dark country roads on the way to the Congressman’s guest house in Bachawan, a few towns away.
Trips like this are a revelation and a reminder. Not all of the Philippines is Makati, all lights and highrises; not all of the Philippines is Boracay, tourist-rich provinces with a wealth of resort developments. A lot of the country is still like this: miles and miles of dark country roads where you could drive for miles at a time without seeing other cars nor houses with lights on at ten in the evening.
There is another ferry to take me to Romblon Island at 5am, after having spent the night at the Congressman’s staff house in Bachawan town. The M/V Querubin is a RO-RO that takes passengers regularly from Tablas to Romblon, and this trip is particularly full, as it is the Friday on the bisperas, the eve of the town’s famous Biniray Festival. A close cousin to the Ati-atihan of Aklan and the Sinulog Festival of Cebu, the Biniray is a festival celebrating the Child Jesus and what the town believes to be their blessed and miraculous connection with the Sto. Niño. The bisperas of the festival is marked by the Tonton, a Mass and a ceremony to take down the image of the Sto. Niño from the church altar, which will then be presented to the town.
Everywhere Filipinos are known for the fervor of their religious devotion, and festivals like the Biniray are a curious mix of pagan folk practice and Christian belief. The Sinulog has become so popular that it has transcended its religious origins—it is now a full-fledged arts and culture festival, with concerts and trade fairs part and parcel of the event. The Ati-atihan is going the way of the Sinulog—both now have their own websites, even—and the Biniray piqued my interest as possibly one of the last grand Sto. Niño festivals that remains true to its roots.
In the meantime, Romblon Island loomed quietly in the distance, a serene swath of green through the morning mist. The island is rich in marble—nearly the entire island is rock, it is whispered—and it does sit in the sea like a small, steadfast rock. Romblon Island is actually the smallest of the three islands of the province, home to only one municipality. Located strategically in between Luzon and the Visayas, and equipped with one of the safest natural harbors in the area, Romblon has always been an important way station for ships.
The port of Romblon greeted us as it has many sailors for centuries, safe and welcoming and calm. The town is already bustling and awake at this early hour, but there are few indications that the town is about to celebrate its biggest festival. No triangle-shaped banners, no gaudy streamers—just a sign to announce the festival’s prizes (P50,000 goes to best “tribe” participating in the parade), and some masons laying in some clay tiles in the market facing the port.
The Tonton is not to start until the afternoon, so instead we hit the ground running, driving outside town proper to get the lay of the land. With a land area of only 11,157 hectares, it doesn’t take much to cover the island from tip to tip.
Our first stop is Diwata Resort, in Barangay Lonos, just thirty minutes out of the poblacion. It is supposed to be one of the premiere resorts on Romblon, and one of the newest, a favorite among tourists and locals alike. Thirty pesos grants the public entrance to the resort, which features three swimming pools, and huts on the beach, built on stilts above the water.
It’s a pleasant retreat, made more impressive by the fact that this was not designed to be a resort—it was meant to be a family beach house. “We had no idea how big this was going to be!” laughs Dr. Fuente, who had, with his family, moved to the US in 1974. “We just kept sending money to the architect, and when we came home one year, we were just surprised!”
The Fuentes’ story is common in Romblon. Go to the resorts in town, and you will find that most of them are built with immigrants’ money, sent back home to build a retreat for their owners, a place to retire. Romblon casts a strong spell over its native sons and daughters, and many of them seem to want nothing more than to return there in their sunset years.
Diwata Resort, named after the youngest of the three Fuente daughters, was fully booked for the Biniray, Dr. Fuente apologized, but would we perhaps like to stay in his other beach house, next to Talipasak Resort?
Another forty minutes away, the Fuentes’ private beach house is a lovely two-room affair on a cliff, a short walk up from one of the island’s best coves. It is the very essence of a secret tropical island beach cove—dramatic boulders on a lonely shore, waves quietly rolling in. It’s amazing to think that this is the view someone would wake to every single day.
“My son-in-law, when we brought him over here the first time, told me, ‘Dad, this is paradise! This is paradise!”
Everywhere we go, it is apparent that Romblon is not by any means a rich province. Most of the island had gotten electricity only in the past few years, and the marble industry, for a while a significant source of the province’s income, had taken a nosedive since cheaper sources from China flooded the market. Agriculture, fishing, and some mining are now at the heart of the province’s economy, but the nascent tourism industry might be Romblon’s best hope.
But let’s face it: Romblon is a long way away from becoming the next Boracay, the next Cebu. Roads have to be built, ferry systems regularized, power and water have to reach more corners of the islands. In the meantime, most of the people in Romblon scrape by on subsistence farming and fishing.
Which makes the story of Agpanibat even more extraordinary. At the northern end of Romblon, Agpanibat is a small barangay on whose beachhead sea turtles have decided to nest. Since 2003, when the area was discovered, the townsfolk have learned to watch for the eggs around nesting time, and when the time comes for the eggs to hatch, the good people of Agpanibat help the baby turtles to sea.
They’re well aware of the 95% mortality rate of these baby turtles, and to help them out a little, some families care for a baby turtle or two—feeding them, cleaning them daily, making sure they grow to a respectable size before they are released to the wild in nine or ten months, before the next cache of turtle eggs are laid on their beaches.
This is not done out of whim nor out of any need to impress non-existent visitors. In homes where there is sometimes not enough for the family members to eat, the turtles often come first. “Minsan, pag walang pagkain, sila lang ang may pagkain. Kapag sardinas ang ulam ng mga tao, sariwang isda ang kinakain ng pawikan (Sometimes, when there is no food, only they will have food. If canned sardines are what the people have to eat, the sea turtles will have fresh fish),” says Job Martinez, Agpanibat’s barangay chairman and the vice-president of the local Municipal Fisheries and Aquatic Resource Management Council. He has come bearing a bucket with half a dozen or so baby turtles, each about a month old, borrowed from some of Agpanibat’s houses.
The turtles, he explains gently, become a beloved part of the family for the time they are there. “Iniiyakan sila pag pinapakawalan na (Tears are shed when they’re released into the wild).”
The eve of the Biniray is a holiday in Romblon, but every public school we pass is open and busy, with a yard full of schoolchildren. They’re preparing for the Biniray, explains Toto Ang, Congressman Madrona’s aide de camp in Romblon Island. Schools and barangays form the different brigades that will send groups over to the poblacion for the Biniray, dancing and drumming to honor the Sto. Niño. Nearly every other barangay in Romblon will be on the Biniray, with everyone making the trip to the town proper to take part in the festivities.
Already, at the Tonton, the Cathedral of St. Joseph is full to the rafters with devotees of the Sto. Niño. The crowds spill outside, into the town square, as loudspeakers broadcast the Mass. Inside the cathedral, the mood is quiet but excited, solemn but celebratory.
Outside the 17th century church, the air is a bit rowdier. As in any provincial fiesta, there are vendors hawking all sorts of wares—cotton candy, balloon animals, toys, food, trinkets of all sorts—and entire families and barkadas enjoying the sights together. There is a thrumming in the air—literally, too, as several drum brigades are already assembled, and some of their members are rehearsing softly.
The devotion and investment of the Romblomanons in the Biniray festival can be seen in the way unofficial (i.e., those not in the running for the competition prize) groups assemble even before the next day’s festival, waiting only to give the Sto. Niño the welcome it deserves as it is paraded around the town plaza.
When the Mass is over, the shouts ring out from inside the church: “Viva Señor Santo Niño!” And then again from the plaza: “Viva! Viva! Viva!”
There is such a great and overwhelming sincerity in the Romblomanons’ celebration of the Biniray. This is not being done for the benefit of tourists or the media—there are very few representatives of those in town. No, the Biniray is still Romblon’s own, and they celebrate the festival because it is tied in so tightly still with their own history, their culture, their very blood.
And the rhythms that the tribes march to is very powerful. Literally, as the drums they use are big and are pounded with such great force that there is hardly a corner of town where they cannot be heard. The drums start right as the Sto. Niño is handed down from the altar, as the bands begin their jubilant march around the town square.
This year, it is Congressman Madrona who has the honor of holding up the Sto. Niño for everyone to see, before marching out to the plaza to parade it once around the center of town. There is a mad flurry as devotees flock to the small statue of the Child Jesus, hoping to touch the statue dressed in the royal finery traditional to Spanish-Filipino images. Congressman Madrona nearly topples over from the weight of the devotees pressing around him, trying to get one touch of the miraculous statue. One round around the plaza, with everyone cheering “Viva! Viva! Viva!” Everyone seems so guilelessly happy, like children.
There is talk of putting up an international airport in Carabao Island, one of the islets south of Romblon and part of the town of San Jose. If and when that happens, as it might later this year, tourists will not only have better access to Boracay, but they will also discover the secret that is Romblon. Already there is talk that Carabao Island, twice as large as Boracay and with white sand beaches and clear blue waters as stunning as that of its neighbor. “The next Boracay,” people are calling it.
This is something on my mind as we trek to the top of Mount Agbaliga, from which we could view the town and the harbor. Romblon is so quiet and so sleepy, even as the last straggling drummers of the Biniray beat on the day after the festival.
Romblon is not so far from Manila, really. A ferry can take you here from Batangas overnight, from Caticlan in a couple of hours. The plane lands in Tugdan, in Tablas Island in barely an hour after it departs from the Domestic Airport. And yet, for now it still seems so remote, so untouched and unspoiled.
There is an open-heartedness among the Romblomanons that will help them welcome development, and tourists, I am sure. The international airport, if plans are on track, will fling open the doors to the rest of the world soon enough, and Romblon may soon find itself playing host to as many visitors as they can handle. In my mind, I can see five-star resorts springing up, cemented roads flowing through the arteries of the island, tourists coming in droves. It may never happen, or it may happen very soon, and faster than anyone could guess. But for now, Romblon is a well-kept beauty of a secret.
It’s all a matter of preference, I suppose: if your idea of a paradise is a long stretch of magnificent white sand, some of the country’s most excellent resorts to cater to your every need, world-class restaurants, and a teeming night life—then, of course, there’s Boracay. But if your taste tends towards the more adventurous, the unknown, the unexplored and untouched, if you are looking for unmanufactured experience—then I’ve got a secret for you.
I admit that I could not also resist the lure of the former: I had lugged my bags over to Bora for the day, visiting my favorite restaurants, sitting down on the white sand to marvel at the beach vista. Unfortunately, Bora is crowded at this time of the year, and the reverie ended when a small group of guys claimed the beach chairs next to me and proceeded to have a long, dopey debate about the relative merits of Manila’s malls.
And this is how I found myself that evening on a two-hour boat ride to Romblon. Pump boats and ferries leave the Caticlan jetty for Tablas Island in the morning and in the evening (although a SEAir flight also goes from Manila to Tablas thrice weekly), and I caught the ferry’s 8pm trip. The ferry’s shuddering motor shook in one direction, while the choppy waves pulled another. There was a storm coming, and the channel we were crossing is reputed to be among the roughest in Philippine waters.
Why go? Earlier, I’d spoken to photographers Justin Ventura and Oyen Bautista, and despite having perhaps dozens of destinations between us, none of us had ever ventured to Romblon, and we all confessed—amazed, more than embarrassed—that none of us had heard much about the place. And therein lay the appeal.
Romblon is a one-district province, part of the MIMAROPA region in the Sibuyan Sea. Romblon province is made up of three islands: Sibuyan Island; Tablas, the largest island; and Romblon Island, where the capital is located. I have vague memories of Romblon’s prominence in the region in the 70s, and another friend remembers the luxury cruises one could take from Manila to Romblon in her childhood. These days are long past, and nowadays even the assistant from whom I bought my ferry tickets expressed her surprise that so many people were going to Romblon.
Two queasy hours later, and I threw my bags down on the pier in Looc town, found in Tablas, the largest of the three Romblon islands. Jojo Madrona, aide to Romblon’s lone Congressman Eleandro Jesus Madrona, promptly found me and introduced himself; minutes later, I was breathing easier on the back of a pickup, rushing through the dark country roads on the way to the Congressman’s guest house in Bachawan, a few towns away.
Trips like this are a revelation and a reminder. Not all of the Philippines is Makati, all lights and highrises; not all of the Philippines is Boracay, tourist-rich provinces with a wealth of resort developments. A lot of the country is still like this: miles and miles of dark country roads where you could drive for miles at a time without seeing other cars nor houses with lights on at ten in the evening.
There is another ferry to take me to Romblon Island at 5am, after having spent the night at the Congressman’s staff house in Bachawan town. The M/V Querubin is a RO-RO that takes passengers regularly from Tablas to Romblon, and this trip is particularly full, as it is the Friday on the bisperas, the eve of the town’s famous Biniray Festival. A close cousin to the Ati-atihan of Aklan and the Sinulog Festival of Cebu, the Biniray is a festival celebrating the Child Jesus and what the town believes to be their blessed and miraculous connection with the Sto. Niño. The bisperas of the festival is marked by the Tonton, a Mass and a ceremony to take down the image of the Sto. Niño from the church altar, which will then be presented to the town.
Everywhere Filipinos are known for the fervor of their religious devotion, and festivals like the Biniray are a curious mix of pagan folk practice and Christian belief. The Sinulog has become so popular that it has transcended its religious origins—it is now a full-fledged arts and culture festival, with concerts and trade fairs part and parcel of the event. The Ati-atihan is going the way of the Sinulog—both now have their own websites, even—and the Biniray piqued my interest as possibly one of the last grand Sto. Niño festivals that remains true to its roots.
In the meantime, Romblon Island loomed quietly in the distance, a serene swath of green through the morning mist. The island is rich in marble—nearly the entire island is rock, it is whispered—and it does sit in the sea like a small, steadfast rock. Romblon Island is actually the smallest of the three islands of the province, home to only one municipality. Located strategically in between Luzon and the Visayas, and equipped with one of the safest natural harbors in the area, Romblon has always been an important way station for ships.
The port of Romblon greeted us as it has many sailors for centuries, safe and welcoming and calm. The town is already bustling and awake at this early hour, but there are few indications that the town is about to celebrate its biggest festival. No triangle-shaped banners, no gaudy streamers—just a sign to announce the festival’s prizes (P50,000 goes to best “tribe” participating in the parade), and some masons laying in some clay tiles in the market facing the port.
The Tonton is not to start until the afternoon, so instead we hit the ground running, driving outside town proper to get the lay of the land. With a land area of only 11,157 hectares, it doesn’t take much to cover the island from tip to tip.
Our first stop is Diwata Resort, in Barangay Lonos, just thirty minutes out of the poblacion. It is supposed to be one of the premiere resorts on Romblon, and one of the newest, a favorite among tourists and locals alike. Thirty pesos grants the public entrance to the resort, which features three swimming pools, and huts on the beach, built on stilts above the water.
It’s a pleasant retreat, made more impressive by the fact that this was not designed to be a resort—it was meant to be a family beach house. “We had no idea how big this was going to be!” laughs Dr. Fuente, who had, with his family, moved to the US in 1974. “We just kept sending money to the architect, and when we came home one year, we were just surprised!”
The Fuentes’ story is common in Romblon. Go to the resorts in town, and you will find that most of them are built with immigrants’ money, sent back home to build a retreat for their owners, a place to retire. Romblon casts a strong spell over its native sons and daughters, and many of them seem to want nothing more than to return there in their sunset years.
Diwata Resort, named after the youngest of the three Fuente daughters, was fully booked for the Biniray, Dr. Fuente apologized, but would we perhaps like to stay in his other beach house, next to Talipasak Resort?
Another forty minutes away, the Fuentes’ private beach house is a lovely two-room affair on a cliff, a short walk up from one of the island’s best coves. It is the very essence of a secret tropical island beach cove—dramatic boulders on a lonely shore, waves quietly rolling in. It’s amazing to think that this is the view someone would wake to every single day.
“My son-in-law, when we brought him over here the first time, told me, ‘Dad, this is paradise! This is paradise!”
Everywhere we go, it is apparent that Romblon is not by any means a rich province. Most of the island had gotten electricity only in the past few years, and the marble industry, for a while a significant source of the province’s income, had taken a nosedive since cheaper sources from China flooded the market. Agriculture, fishing, and some mining are now at the heart of the province’s economy, but the nascent tourism industry might be Romblon’s best hope.
But let’s face it: Romblon is a long way away from becoming the next Boracay, the next Cebu. Roads have to be built, ferry systems regularized, power and water have to reach more corners of the islands. In the meantime, most of the people in Romblon scrape by on subsistence farming and fishing.
Which makes the story of Agpanibat even more extraordinary. At the northern end of Romblon, Agpanibat is a small barangay on whose beachhead sea turtles have decided to nest. Since 2003, when the area was discovered, the townsfolk have learned to watch for the eggs around nesting time, and when the time comes for the eggs to hatch, the good people of Agpanibat help the baby turtles to sea.
They’re well aware of the 95% mortality rate of these baby turtles, and to help them out a little, some families care for a baby turtle or two—feeding them, cleaning them daily, making sure they grow to a respectable size before they are released to the wild in nine or ten months, before the next cache of turtle eggs are laid on their beaches.
This is not done out of whim nor out of any need to impress non-existent visitors. In homes where there is sometimes not enough for the family members to eat, the turtles often come first. “Minsan, pag walang pagkain, sila lang ang may pagkain. Kapag sardinas ang ulam ng mga tao, sariwang isda ang kinakain ng pawikan (Sometimes, when there is no food, only they will have food. If canned sardines are what the people have to eat, the sea turtles will have fresh fish),” says Job Martinez, Agpanibat’s barangay chairman and the vice-president of the local Municipal Fisheries and Aquatic Resource Management Council. He has come bearing a bucket with half a dozen or so baby turtles, each about a month old, borrowed from some of Agpanibat’s houses.
The turtles, he explains gently, become a beloved part of the family for the time they are there. “Iniiyakan sila pag pinapakawalan na (Tears are shed when they’re released into the wild).”
The eve of the Biniray is a holiday in Romblon, but every public school we pass is open and busy, with a yard full of schoolchildren. They’re preparing for the Biniray, explains Toto Ang, Congressman Madrona’s aide de camp in Romblon Island. Schools and barangays form the different brigades that will send groups over to the poblacion for the Biniray, dancing and drumming to honor the Sto. Niño. Nearly every other barangay in Romblon will be on the Biniray, with everyone making the trip to the town proper to take part in the festivities.
Already, at the Tonton, the Cathedral of St. Joseph is full to the rafters with devotees of the Sto. Niño. The crowds spill outside, into the town square, as loudspeakers broadcast the Mass. Inside the cathedral, the mood is quiet but excited, solemn but celebratory.
Outside the 17th century church, the air is a bit rowdier. As in any provincial fiesta, there are vendors hawking all sorts of wares—cotton candy, balloon animals, toys, food, trinkets of all sorts—and entire families and barkadas enjoying the sights together. There is a thrumming in the air—literally, too, as several drum brigades are already assembled, and some of their members are rehearsing softly.
The devotion and investment of the Romblomanons in the Biniray festival can be seen in the way unofficial (i.e., those not in the running for the competition prize) groups assemble even before the next day’s festival, waiting only to give the Sto. Niño the welcome it deserves as it is paraded around the town plaza.
When the Mass is over, the shouts ring out from inside the church: “Viva Señor Santo Niño!” And then again from the plaza: “Viva! Viva! Viva!”
There is such a great and overwhelming sincerity in the Romblomanons’ celebration of the Biniray. This is not being done for the benefit of tourists or the media—there are very few representatives of those in town. No, the Biniray is still Romblon’s own, and they celebrate the festival because it is tied in so tightly still with their own history, their culture, their very blood.
And the rhythms that the tribes march to is very powerful. Literally, as the drums they use are big and are pounded with such great force that there is hardly a corner of town where they cannot be heard. The drums start right as the Sto. Niño is handed down from the altar, as the bands begin their jubilant march around the town square.
This year, it is Congressman Madrona who has the honor of holding up the Sto. Niño for everyone to see, before marching out to the plaza to parade it once around the center of town. There is a mad flurry as devotees flock to the small statue of the Child Jesus, hoping to touch the statue dressed in the royal finery traditional to Spanish-Filipino images. Congressman Madrona nearly topples over from the weight of the devotees pressing around him, trying to get one touch of the miraculous statue. One round around the plaza, with everyone cheering “Viva! Viva! Viva!” Everyone seems so guilelessly happy, like children.
There is talk of putting up an international airport in Carabao Island, one of the islets south of Romblon and part of the town of San Jose. If and when that happens, as it might later this year, tourists will not only have better access to Boracay, but they will also discover the secret that is Romblon. Already there is talk that Carabao Island, twice as large as Boracay and with white sand beaches and clear blue waters as stunning as that of its neighbor. “The next Boracay,” people are calling it.
This is something on my mind as we trek to the top of Mount Agbaliga, from which we could view the town and the harbor. Romblon is so quiet and so sleepy, even as the last straggling drummers of the Biniray beat on the day after the festival.
Romblon is not so far from Manila, really. A ferry can take you here from Batangas overnight, from Caticlan in a couple of hours. The plane lands in Tugdan, in Tablas Island in barely an hour after it departs from the Domestic Airport. And yet, for now it still seems so remote, so untouched and unspoiled.
There is an open-heartedness among the Romblomanons that will help them welcome development, and tourists, I am sure. The international airport, if plans are on track, will fling open the doors to the rest of the world soon enough, and Romblon may soon find itself playing host to as many visitors as they can handle. In my mind, I can see five-star resorts springing up, cemented roads flowing through the arteries of the island, tourists coming in droves. It may never happen, or it may happen very soon, and faster than anyone could guess. But for now, Romblon is a well-kept beauty of a secret.
Edited version previously published as the cover story in SEAir's InFlight magazine, February 2008
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