Boracay! Part 2

Ahh, Boracay. Life on this sacred isle would not be complete without the consumption of mass quantities of alcohol.

However, we all know that mass quantities of alcohol usually cost a lot. What I am about to tell you is a closely guarded secret among Boracay veterans, and will make your alcoholic consumption  more efficient and budget friendly. There are a lot of ways of getting completely hammered under a budget in Boracay, that is, without getting anyone to buy your drinks for you. I’ll be sharing a few of these tips with you.

1. Drink in your Hotel Room. Before going out to paint the town red, a lot of Boracay veterans prefer to buy hard liquor in Manila, check in their bottles at the airport, and drink the night senseless in their hotel room. An alternative to this is buying booze from the groceries and convenience stores around the area. The bottom line is that you avoid the high per bottle/per shot cost from the bars, and get buzzed in your hotel room before heading out. This way, a few drinks at the bars will be all you need to have a great evening.
2. Watch out for Promos, Happy Hour, and Buy 1 Take 1 Drinks. A lot of establishments in Stations 1 and 2 offer drinks at incredibly low prices during off-peak hours. Some bars offer 2 for 1 cocktails and beer at around 3pm and last until 5pm. Although a bit early, the drinks cost a lot less and are great for that late afternoon buzz. A really great deal we found while we were there was the Drink All You Can promo at Obama, located near the Grotto. For P275.00, you can drink all the cocktails you can from 5pm till 8pm. This was great, as you can sip your margaritas while watching the sun set and while hearing the waves crash along the shore.
3. Watch out for Friends. This one’s probably one of the best. Keep your eyes peeled for people you know, who also happen to be in Boracay as well, and are celebrating an occasion. Free booze.

After getting buzzed, time to get your groove on and party! Although there are a lot of places in Boracay that boast of the best parties, I realized that people frequent certain establishments:

1. Club Parau
2. Juice
3. Epic

These three places are packed, and there’s something usually going on there that keeps the party alive. Great parties, great crowds, and awesome booze. That’s the great time triad right there.

Boracay!

The Grotto, photo by DJ Mercado

Ah, Boracay. Never has a dull moment been met when I am in your bosom.

This is actually my first post outside the Internet Explorer trip. I must admit, I miss travel blogging.

Onwards!

Boracay Island is located 2km off the tip of Panay Island in the Western Visayas, and is governed mostly by the Provinvial Government of Aklan.

There are two popular routes of going to Boracay. The first, and most convenient, is via Caticlan. Direct flights are available from Manila to Caticlan, and getting to the Jettyport is not a problem. It is advised, however, that you book your flights early on, as Manila-Caticlan flights can be expensive when booked late.

The second route is via Kalibo. Upon touching down in Kalibo Airport, one has to board a shuttle headed to the Caticlan Jettyport, which takes approximately 2 hours.

A great suggestion that I received is going to Boracay via Kalibo, then going back to Manila via Caticlan. That way, you get to save some cash on the way, and enjoy the more relaxed travel going back.

When I arrived in Boracay, I had the following ToDo list:
- Get a Jonah’s milkshake
- Eat a Choriburger
- Party
- Get a very light tan

I think that about covers your basic Boracay experience, yeah? Enjoy the beach, drink a bit (read: like a fish) and feast on the local flavor, hahaha!

So, let’s go through the list.

Jonah’s Fruit Shake and Snack Bar is located in Station 1, near the grotto. The (used to be) small snack stand serves the island’s iconic shakes, and I’m not talking about your basic flavors here. Although they do serve your usual Mango, Banana, and Mangonana, they also serve other unique flavors, such as Peanut Butter Chocolate, flavors with Rhum, and Melon Milkshake (reminiscent of an old Magnolia milk flavor I adored as a child). I had the Mango-Banana mix, as I really wanted something classic at the time. I’ve only been to Boracay twice, and Jonah’s has never failed to brighten my day (further!). I absolutely recommend their shakes. Be careful of cheap knock-offs, though. There are a lot of shake stands in the island.

Next on my list was the Choriburger. I wasn’t really picky where the Choriburger is concerned. I. Just. Want. To. Have. One. Fortunately, there are grilled stuff vendors everywhere on the island, so getting the choriburger wasn’t really that hard.

Next up, PARTY!

It’s always sunny in Samal pt. 2

While on the Island Garden Coast of Samal (or IGaCoS), the three of us stayed at the Pearl Farm Beach Resort. It’s a beautiful place that also affords guests sufficient privacy. While the night life here is quite subdued, the resort has its own attractions to keep both guests and day visitors preoccupied during the day: snorkeling, island hopping, basketball/volleyball/tennis matches at the court, the arcade, feeding Charlie (the Pearl Farm’s temperamental cockatoo), fish feeding, swimming on either the two pools or in seawater, and, the one I enjoyed best, looking at these views to my heart’s content:

Apo was visible on a 9 o'clock morning--hallelujah!

But just lounging at a resort for a couple of days, no matter if it’s a premium resort, drives me nuts. So on our second day at Pearl Farm, Mia went snorkeling, Pepper vegetated in our room, and I decided to take a short road trip around IGaCos.

Habal-habal drivers are easy to find and rent on the island; just outside the pearly (not really) gates of Pearl Farm, there was a shed where a couple of them were hanging out, waiting for passengers. They are pretty helpful folks. If you haven’t drawn up an itinerary for your road trip yet, they give tips on the island attractions you might want to see and how long the drive would be going back and forth. I wanted very much to get up close with Mount Puting Bato, the highest point in Samal where you can get a view of even mainland Davao, but according to my designated driver Kuya Otol, the trip going inland to the mountain is at least three hours long. Plus, I’m no mountaineer and I wasn’t really prepared to trek on inclined dirt roads that morning. So we settled on going to the Hagimit Falls then the Monfort Bat Cave instead.

Habal-habal is my number one mode-of-transportation of choice

Five minutes after driving away from the slightly bumpy road leading from Pearl Farm, Kuya Otol stopped his motorbike to let me take in this view:

I wish I had a wide-enough vocabulary to name all the different shades of blue in this photo.

I’d like to think that if it weren’t for the foliage, I would have seen the horizon curve ever so slightly, proving that the earth is, indeed, round.

Anyway.

IGaCos’ main road is wide and paved–a great thing. Means of transportation, aside from habal-habals, are small buses and jeepneys. There is hardly any traffic on the road, though. We got to Hagimit Falls in around 15 minutes and after Kuya Otol parked his bike and I paid the P20 entrance fee, we went down a pretty long flight of concrete steps to get to the falls’ source.

The actual falls is a teeny tiny one, but it is enough to keep the whole area cool. Families flock to Hagimit on weekends for some PG-rated fun and visitors can rent huts, tables, and chairs for a small fee. But kids, remember: strictly no diving.

We didn’t stay too long at Hagimit Falls since I wasn’t planning to do some freshwater swimming, so we hopped on the bike to proceed to Barangay Tambo where the Monfort Bat Cave is. The road leading there after a fork on the main highway wasn’t paved so the ride was pretty dusty. It took us about 20 minutes to locate it; Kuya Otol claimed that the entrance route had been changed.

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Entrance to the Monfort Bat Cave grounds is only P20, and during my visit, there were two very helpful and funny beckys (my favorite term of endearment for the gays) who served as tour guides.

The Monfort Bat Cave was declared by Guinness World Records as having the largest colony of Geoffrey’s Rousette Fruit Bats or Rousetteus amplexicaudatus just last February. A conservative estimate from the Bat Conservation International pegged the bat population living in the cave at around 1.8 million.

I can get behind that figure.

Here are the things that will hit you once you get close to the cave:

a. The noise. You have millions of bats vying for a square inch of stone to hang from, and they fill the air with their wing-rustling and their screeching for space.
b. The smell. In Sagada, the stench of guano was tinged with salt. Here in Monfort, it’s sickly sweet and clammy. The tour guide says that is due to the bats’ fruit diet.
c. The sight. Not gonna lie, those critters look weirdly cute.

Monfort serves as a sanctuary for these flying mammals; though bats are still caught for food and for fun in IGaCos, catching them within the Monfort premises is strictly forbidden. Fruit bats are especially important in the pollination of durian, as they are the only ones who can withstand the fruit’s stench, hence the mandated protection. And really, we should all be aware that every animal has a niche in the global ecosystem, and the loss of just one species spells trouble for all of us. (Although I have to admit, I was intrigued by adobong paniki.)

Yeah, wordpress is refusing to rotate a couple of pictures, sorry.

Afterward, we took the longer route going back to Pearl Farm, and while the sun shone throughout the road trip, the Samal breeze helped keep us cool. On the whole, the trip took less than three hours. For a basic fee of P200 (I’m not sure if this is an arbitrary amount or it’s the standard fee for a two-destination road trip) plus P100 for gas, it was well worth my money. (Please try to tip the nice habal-habal drivers.) Maybe on my next visit, I’ll get some face time with Mount Puting Bato.