South Luzon Loop: SUBIC BEACH

Here's the beach post! haha. But first let's clear things. The Subic Beach we visited was not the Subic Beach of Zambales, it's Subic Beach of Sorsogon.

So how'd we get here? We came all the way from Pasig, then stayed overnight at Naga, then Cagsawa Ruins, then Matnog Sorsogon. We met Grace (a representative of Kuya Alex aka Kuya Lopito) in the market where we were taking lunch. It was actually Kuya Lopito whom I negotiated with, but according to ate Grace he has a lot of guests so he let us to her able hands. Anyhoo, after lunch I told Grace that I need to buy some food for our overnight stay. She was so bait that she helped me carry all my palengke loots!

By 2:30pm, we were already on the boat going to Subic Liit. I read that it is better to stay there instead of Subic Dako because aside from the caretakers, there are no inhabitants in the island. As compared to Subic Dako where a lot of people reside in the island plus the fact that it is slowly getting commercialized.

I'm not sure if we reached the island before Christ died. But I'm sure it was past 3pm when I went to look for a water source after putting our bags down in the cottage we rented. There are no faucets there! Only a deep-well with a real container tied with a rope. The locals will help you to it but I just have to try it!

We were not yet starving during that time but we decided to cook our dinner already because we thought it's hard to cook in the dark. So I bought all the stuff in the market but I forgot to think about the cooking and eating stuff like where to marinate the chicken and where and how to eat. Dang! We tried to ask the caretakers if they have some kaldero to lend us. Good thing they do have!

They also lent us a parilya! Nice!

Look at my boys taking care of grilling -

D manned cooking the rice because I'm not sure I know how to cook it manually now. Sosyal! And he didn't want to leave it -

Take a look at D's finished product. Nice eh?

We asked the caretakers' help also to get banana leaf so we can eat there instead. They were so helpful. But I noticed that they were so quiet, it seemed like they do not speak much Tagalog. By 5pm, we were already eating. The food was so tempting! haha

Have you noticed our sandok? Improvised! haha

Anyway, we were taking turns dipping in the beach during our process of cooking. Here's the view - 

The right side. Photo by Leo



The left side



From inside



The tree. Photo by Leo

After our early dinner, the three of us finally took the much awaited dip in the beach!

And of course, a sweet couple pic -

Unfortunately, the beach hid the sunset to our view. 

After the sun set, we started to prepare for a night cap. Here's our camping grounds -

Our tent and cottage

We used the candles Leo bought in the store to light our night kwentuhan. That freaking candle costed 20 pesos each. Insane! Everything's really double-priced when you're in a secluded place.

And as if it's not enough, we lit a bonfire!

So that's it for the day. Wonder what I think of the island? It was awesome. Like Anawangin kind of awesome. Only cleaner and purer. And less crowded. The caretakers really are taking care of the island because I saw them sweeping everytime! For the waters, it was clean. Somewhat blueish-green. I just got scared that the water was deep already eventhough it's just a few meters away from the shore. The shore, by the way, was so full of shells that it was hard to walk barefoot. Reminded me to buy aqua shoes. hehe. I used my underwater camera to take a shot of this. This is what you will walk into the beach -

For the sand - it's creamy, whitish, pinkish sand. Well, it was known to be the Pink Sand Island but I haven't noticed it at first, only when I scoop it in my hand and took a closer view. It was washed out red corals. Look for yourself -

The beach was nothing like that of Bohol (my fave beach to date), Palawan or even Boracay. Would I suggest it? If you're coming from the Bicol Region, YES! If you're a rider and you're doing the South Luzon Loop also like us, then GO! Pero kung dadayuhin mo lang, think twice. Mejo malamok ha!

Here's our expenses specific to this island tour:
Boatride (Overnight, including Island Hopping) - P1800
             c/o Alex Genoblaza 09183045437
Cottage - P500
Entance - P50 each
Environmental Fee - P20 per group

The environmental ek-ek fee is just new according to Kuya Alex. Maybe the government noticed that the island is getting popular already so they wanted to make a profit out of it. The cottage fee also suprised me. I was reading some blogs days before and they were all saying that you'll just pay around 100-200 pesos for it. Its more expensive when we were there! Maybe because it's Holy Week. And it's ok with me because everyone in the island naman were so nice. Also, as you'll notice, the price Kuya Alex gave us for the boatride includes Island Hopping tour. So that includes a visit to Subic Dako and the Juag Fish Sanctuary. We asked the boatmen to fetch us at 9 in the morning, which we regret by the way because we were up at around 6am already. So after eating our reheated breakfast, we have nothing to do anymore since we do not want to swim again. We didn't want to carry a bunch of wet clothes during the ride, specially now that we will go back again to the Bitukang Manok route. So, we made our way now to Juag Island. Wow Kuya Alex was right, it was full of people. I think we were 5th in the line. We waited for 10 long minutes and the line was not getting shorter so we decided to just skip it. Good thing Leo managed to take a snap of it -

I guess the boatmen thought that since we backed out of Juag Fish Sanctuary, we do not want to go to the rest of the islands anymore so they took us straight to the port. They were right, but I feel kinda lonely. Arte! haha. We went back to Kuya Alex's house to get our gears, had our lunch in our fave eatery in the market, then started our way back home.



Beachy,
Yosh