Yesterday was our day off and we decided to go to the beach, finally. Here we are in a country with over 7,000 islands and we hadn’t made it to the coast yet. We woke up at 5:30am to be ready to leave at 6am. This is really early for all of us westerners but when we got out it felt like 9am because everyone was up and out, starting their day. We took a tryke out of Valley Golf (our neighborhood),
a FX (a SUV taxi sort of thing but there is no meter so you decide how much to pay ahead of time) to the bus station, and a 3-hour bus ride to Subic Bay. A little side note here, Subic Bay was the site in WWII where we had a naval base. Then another bus to the actual beach we wanted to hang out at. All in all, it took us 5 hours to get there. So, by 11am when we arrived at the beach we were starving! I took a quick dip in the ocean (it’s SO hot here) and then we sat down at the restaurant for lunch. Some swam and others sat under the shade eating and lounging around.
After I was done lounging I decided to go hang out in the ocean with Michelle, Angi, Sharon and Joel. I convinced them to swim to the “castle island”. This is “Castle Island” (ignore the scaff on my face, lol)
It didn’t look that far. But, sheesh! I would estimate that it’s about 3 times the length of Barton Springs pool. It took me about an hour to swim out to it and I was the first one there. This island was so cool. When I first got there I climbed up on the side where all the sharp rocks were. They were covered with shells and very sharp. I ended up cutting up both legs and the bottom of my feet. There were crabs, hermit crabs and little fish everywhere. It looks like they must have built this “castle” a while back. Everything was old and worn out but we could make out a fireplace, bathroom and shallow pool. The swim back was a lot faster.
Once we got back we joined the rest of the group that had found a 24-hour hotel/restaurant that had a pool overlooking the ocean.
The only stipulation was that if you weren’t staying at the hotel you had to spend 300 pesos in food and drink. That’s a whopping $6. It wasn’t easy, everything is so cheap. I finally had to order a milkshake at the end just to get up to 300 pesos. We had a wonderful day. We got 12 people there and back with no complications and with a lot of fun!!
