an eventful birthday

after work last saturday morning, i hurriedly packed my stuff for a weekend getaway at the beach with my siblings and beki r.

itinerary:
day 1: overnight at anawangin
day 2: capones-camara side trip

anawangin has a magical beach for nightswimming. when you move around in the water, you can see bubbles that glow in the dark. it's weird that nobody ever told me about this fantastic phenomenon. (no pictures, though. too bad.) my beach buddies and i were entranced by this, and came up with different explanations. older sis said it must be the geological location - something to do with volcanic minerals. younger bro and i said it's gotta be marine biodiversity. whatever it was, we couldn't get enough of it, and we kept swishing around in the water until it rained, heavily. with thunder and lightning.

the downpour was just one of the things that could've ruined - but ultimately, didn't - my wonderful beach birthday getaway. the other one was unpreparedness for camping. it's actually embarrassing, considering that i've taken camping class in UP. this was also my second time in anawangin.

unpreparedness here means we didn't have kerosene for easier cooking and we didn't waterproof our stuff. so what happened was we learned how to build fire using paper and patience. thank god for law school readings. surprisingly, dinner turned out delicious. as for the consequences of not waterproofing our stuff.. that one remains to be the only epic fail of the trip.



we started day 2 with yet again a surprisingly yummy meal: perfect sinaing courtesy of me (take note, uling lang ang pinaglutuan *beam with pride*), fried fish, grilled pork, noodles with egg, coffee. or maybe, anything tastes good in anawangin. hehe.

then we were off explorin and camwhorin. heee. maybe beki r is really our long lost non-cebuano speaking sibling.

then our boatman arrived and took us to capones. there, more explorin and camwhorin of the island's tourist attraction, the lighthouse and the ruins of an old, elegant building. it should be mentioned that capones must be the island of lost slippers.



our next stop was camara. we did a bit of snorkeling, although there wasn't much to see. the sand bar was beautiful, though. the water was warm and the waves were relaxing. i mainly just floated around in a life vest and thought happy thoughts. until it rained, again, heavily. with thunder and lightning.



our boatman decided we shouldn't wait for the rain to stop. which was a good decision, since the rain didn't stop soon. it was my first time to be at sea in such weather. it must have been my little heart, beating fast, and adrenaline that made me a bit high. i actually enjoyed that stormy bangka ride.

apparently, that part of zambales experiences that kind of weather during this time of the year. sunny in the morning, heavy downpour from afternoon til late in the evening.

we got to our host's at a little past 3 pm. the sight of our wet clothes and the thought of wearing them in a really cold bus disheartened us. after a meal of chicken, dinuguan and barbeque, though, we were back to our cheery selves.

we caught a bus that showed the italian job. and then we had comforting coffee at the stop in lubao. when we got to monumento after two hours, we were tired but still happy.



:D

all photos courtesy of beki r. we had to settle for her camera phone.