From B to Z

Actually, it should be the other way around: from Z (for Zamboanga) to B (Basilan) and back.

In 2012, when a seat sale came about, my friends and I decided to explore uncharted territories (for us, anyway) and pick a destination that we or anyone else we could immediately think of haven’t been to before. It was an easy choice: Zamboanga is about as far as you could get from Manila without actually leaving the country. And so, with a rudimentary list of recommendations we culled from acquaintances and blogs (“Try the satay! Go to Santa Cruz Island! Don’t leave without trying the curacha!”), off we went, way, way south of the country.

As “exotic” as Zamboanga City has become thanks to the news, the place felt like the usual sleepy town when we made touchdown at around six in the morning. (Remember, this was in 2012 and so that terrible siege between the military and rebel forces hadn’t happened yet.) Tricycles, jeeps, and cabs plied the main roads, and near the airport was a commercial square where we spotted a Chowking sign. None of us were interested in that, though. The first order of the day—after having as breakfast the orange-y satay drenched in an even oranger sauce—we dumped our bags in a hostel downtown and proceeded to the city’s own version of Baywalk.

The goal was to get to Santa Cruz Island, the place of the famed pink sands. It was easy to hire a boat to take us there, as there was a tourism office and a small port at the Baywalk. My friends and I worried at first about lunch, i.e. what would we eat on the island, as the plan was to stay there for hours, but the boatman assured us that there are fishermen there who could round up a batch of crabs for us, fresh from the sea, for some dining al fresco.

Heading to Sta. Cruz Island

             

                Indeed, the beach was pink—from afar. Up close, it was a fine mixture of red and white, the red courtesy of shattered corals.

Crushed red corals mix with the sand

 

Beachfront

 

There are locals who stay on the island. Badjaos, if I remember correctly. They set up little shops near the shore, selling little trinkets. Deeper in the island forest are their burial sites, with the dead’s remains placed inside small wooden boats, symbolic of the journey to the afterlife.

Caveat: This information I’m spouting is from an unreliable memory, as I was mostly preoccupied that day befriending the sweet and slightly scared dogs on the island. All of them had stubs for tails, and according to one of our guides, it’s a common practice among island inhabitants to cut short their tails while they’re still puppies. Poor dogs:(( So anyway, for more accurate information about the Santa Cruz Island folks, GMG. (Google mo, gents and ladies.)

After wading and floating in the water, it was time for the day’s most important agenda. Actually, the initial big plan was to be taken by boat into a lagoon deeper into the island, but since the tide was too high, we had to forego that. Crabs for lunch, of course, was also an important agenda, but not nearly as important as a jump shot…in front of a make-shift vinta sail. WOMP WOMP!

Finally, lunch.

Crabby by the sea

 

                We decided to walk a bit around the island after, with a couple of guides going with us. The guides were said to be necessary, as Santa Cruz is in the patch of sea separating Zamboanga City from Basilan. Hence if there should be bandits on the island, it’d be safer to stay on the side nearest the boat and nearest back to Zambo.

View from the walk

Naks, art

 

                Too bad our stroll was broken by some unseen warning received by our guides who said there were bandits who’d come ashore from Basilan, so we trekked back to the boat as rain started to pour.

Upon getting back to the city, we thought it would be best to have dinner at the Baywalk. Here, we spotted a restaurant selling a seafood platter with curacha in it. Of course, we had to try it. The recommended restaurant was actually Alavar’s, located a bit more uptown, but we wanted to have another meal by the sea and see the “dancing fountain” at the Baywalk Plaza. It was a nice experience, albeit the periodic brownouts, a common problem in Zamboanga.

With our taste buds gotten into a frenzy by the sneak preview of the real thing, we were really hankering to get some honest-to-goodness curacha. We boarded a jeep headed uptown, got off in front of Alavar’s, and prepared our stomachs

😀

 

                Curachas are hairy, fleshy, deep-sea crabs as big as my face. What makes them extra special,though, is the Alavar sauce, an intensely delicious concoction made from gata and secrety secret spices and whatnot—of course, the restaurant folks would never tell—that can make eating even plain white rice exciting. Meaning, kahit palaman sa tinapay, masarap siya. It’s so good, you’d forego cleanliness and dining etiquette just to suck the last morsel of Alavar-coated crab meat from the recesses of the crab shell.

Yuuuuuummm

 

                Too bad the Zamboangeño restaurant in Quezon City has closed down. You’d have to fly to Zambo to taste this truly legendary sauce. We had the option to buy a large jar of it, but I can’t remember if we had an issue about carry-on and luggage weight or if it’s allowed to be checked in at the airport, but we ended up not getting one. That Alavar sauce still haunts me in my dreeeeaaaaams.

By the way, after the boat trip back to the city, my friends and I met Marshall, as he calls himself. He’s a traffic enforcer-slash-tour guide of sorts who convinced us to join this other group he’s taking around. That part of our trip with the other tourists wasn’t so fun because of said other tourists so I’ll skip that, but it was Marshall who got the idea into our head to go on a day trip to Basilan on the morning of our flight back to Manila.

There are ferry boats that go back and forth the whole day between Zamboanga and Basilan, and they get pretty packed so weren’t too worried about entering strange territory. We thought it would be best, though, to look the least tourist-like as much as possible for our own safety, as even Marshall himself, who goes back and forth between Zambo and Basilan frequently, told us it’s not impossible for rebels and bandits to pick on obvious outsiders.

Basilan port

Miming chilling

 

It’s so easy to imagine Basilan as a desolate place because of its reputation, but its capital Isabela looked like any small provincial town: at its center are the church and the city hall, and the maze of narrow streets spread outward from it. Small shops and eateries line the road, and people go about their normal business. There was a Jollibee near the town square and we could spot the symbolic crescent of a nearby mosque. Also nearby is an old cinema house, Zenith.

Isabela, Basilan city hall

Zenith cinema house

Misericordia Street

 

                We would have loved to explore the town more and take in the local culture, but the said group of other tourists had stupider ideas, i.e. ask the tourism officers where else in Basilan we could go using the local city hall’s obviously limited resources such as transportation, driver, and gas. Dear travel bloggers: please don’t use the “exposure” that a place is going to get from your blog as a form of currency to curry favors from local officials. It’s disgusting, and it’s not fair to the locals. You’re no Anthony Bourdain, so getting written about in your blogs is no source of pride or honor to anyone.

So that was how we ended up crammed inside a hot FX, heading deeper inland. Marshall would get this wary look on his face now and then (he was seated in front of me at the back of the vehicle) while scanning the road and the nearby mountains, and of course I’d get nervous. He had said that the farther from the port and the town we get, the more dangerous it would be. We went to a couple of places: as a small, honestly unimpressive waterfall (and there was considerable litter around the area) and a rubber tree plantation, which looked pretty, but what were we supposed to do there, really? Like, really? And since we had seen the rubber tree plantation and taken artsy shots of sap flowing from a tree bark, the driver took us to a rubber factory. POR QUE, RIGHT? (Not the driver’s fault, though, the itinerary had been agreed upon by the tourism officer back in town and the spokesperson of that other tourist group.)

Rubber tree plantation://///

Artsy shot:////

I’m not amused.

               

It smelled quite terrible in that rubber factory, which was located in a secured compound. I was SO PISSED to be there, because we could have been somewhere else, immersed in what normal life in Basilan could be like, you know? Examining the menu of the local Jollibee would have been more interesting than gawking at piles of stinky, tofu-looking rubber. We looked so dumb and pointless, even the few workers at the factory ignored us (and rightfully so). There were distractions, though, such as the military men stationed(?) in the compound. Might as well make a photo op out of it.

Halatang turista, shet

 

                Ugh, I still get pissed thinking about this trip. We did pay for the gas and gave the driver money, but we didn’t have to use them in the first place. We didn’t have to bug the tourism officials in the first place, as we already had a pretty knowledgeable guide with us. Instead of standing around like idiots taking tourist-y photos of pretty much nothing, we could have talked to more locals who feel slighted about the bad rep their place has. One of the city hall officials admitted to us that yes, the town church did get bombed as recently as the year before, but she also said that the place is otherwise peaceful, far from the fighting up in the mountains. On my part as an outsider, the presence of military men at the town square was disconcerting, but I also saw how life was quite normal there. If not for the sight of rifles hanging from the soldier guards’ shoulders, we could have imagined we were in Liliw, Laguna.

See?

 

                It sucks that most of my memories of Basilan are colored by supreme annoyance, and most of those memories are of fucking rubber, since I don’t know if and when I’ll be able to go back there. Kainis. What a wasted opportunity.