Pics from the beach trip
Entry posted by inamorato25 ·
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A few pics from my weekend trip to Puerto Galera. (See map for a free geography lesson.)
If you are in Manila, dreaming of the beach, but too lazy to fly, then Puerto Galera is the place to go. The Sea-Kat bus (with transfer to a ferry to Mindoro Island) leaves from the City State Hotel on Mabini at Padre Faura Street at 8AM every day. Just book at the Puerto Galera booking agency in the hotel, and they will have you sipping San Miguel beers by the beach before noon.
There are several beaches to choose from. If you want to party all night, then Sabang is the most developed area, and is the most diver-friendly. That's where I landed, but I actually stayed two beaches down at Big La Laguna. Much quieter than Sabang, and a better beach, but a long trek home at 3AM when you are having enough problems just walking straight.
My next trip will be this coming weekend. I will be going for 3 days, but bringing my work with me. As I would recommend to anybody, this time I will be staying at Small La Laguna Beach, right beside Sabang. Close enough to party, quiet enough to sleep. And great beachside bars and cafes to work at.
But life is not all about work. A person needs to party, too. This last trip, the first big party night was at an OK bar called the 50-mile bar, just in front of the Atlantis Hotel Dive Center. I hooked up with a big group of divers and we proceeded to get ****-faced. Can you spot the alcoholic?
The next night I paid a few pesos to have a kid paddle me out to the Floating Bar, which is part of Capt'n Gregg's Dive Center and Resort. It's a great place to sip and watch the sun go down. A nice change of perspective.
As it turns out, the guy beside me on the Floating Bar was from very close to my hometown in Canada, and he was about to meet up with a guy from my hometown of Port Alberni. We went to the mainland to meet him, and they decided to "teach me the ropes," dragging me kicking and screaming...(yeah, right!) to pretty much every bar and "disco" (what they call go-go bars in The Philippines) on the strip. There are only 5, so we were pretty much done by 2 AM. Just in time for a bit of food by the beach before risking my life trying to navigate the overland passageway to Big La Laguna.
And then there's the diving. With about 40 dive sites, shark dives, wreck dives, night dives and excellent visibility, I think a real diver would enjoy spending a few days there. For a "fake" diver like me (I love it, but I can count my total dives on 2 hands), one dive was enough. In fact, I had a pressure injury to my ear in December in Thailand, so I only wanted one dive to test-drive my ears.
That was all it took to mess me up again.
I just got back from the doctor and I have been told to avoid diving for 2 or 3 months, and not go in again until I get a full work over. This truly sucks, as if I could dive 4 times a day, I would. I like it that much. But I find that hearing is a very useful life-skill, so maybe I will have to give it preference over diving. We'll see.
The Philippines is a relatively expensive place to travel, and the beaches I saw are nothing compared to Thailand, but it is as lush, as green, and as ecologically diverse as Thailand. And Filipino people are awesome! Puerto Galera is well worth the visit if find yourself in Manila and want to escape the madness for a few days.
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