Sabang, Puerto Galera - 9 – 10 May

After a busy week I was really looking forward to getting out of Manila for the weekend. It was getting harder to get up in the mornings, and the pollution, people and traffic were all starting to get to me. A trip to the beach was just what I needed! I got up early on Saturday morning and along with Sally and Natalie, we caught a taxi to the bus station to meet Kate and catch the bus down to the Batangas pier at about 7am. After the 3 hour bus trip, we hopped on a ferry to head over to Sabang, Puerto Galera on the island of Mindoro. It was nice weather and with the fresh air, and beautiful ocean views, it was almost an immediate cleansing! About an hour on the boat we arrived in the little town of Sabang, where we checked into our modest inn and headed out for some food. We also met up with Mairin who had arrived the night before with a bunch of friends from Perth who are over in the Philippines doing some prac. work for their uni courses. They headed out for a small tour of the surrounding island while the other four of us changed into our bathers and walked over to a nearby beach for some swimming and snorkeling. The snorkeling wasn’t so great as there were a lot of people and boats around which seemed to have destroyed some of the coral, but we were able to see some nice colourful fish. We relaxed on the beach for a while and met some ‘colourful’ characters – some really young looking women who worked in some of the local bars. There were many ex-pats around the place – mainly men and you can only guess what Sabang used to be quite well known for. It’s been cleaned up a little and the diving has become the main attraction, but none of us were divers and there was still some interesting remnants of the other side of Sabang around. We all met up for dinner and watched the Australia vs. Springboks rugby game at a local pub. The next day we had a relaxing breakfast by the beach and then I went for a walk around to the look out point. We had to catch the ferry back at 1pm so it was a short sojourn to the beach, but a relaxing one.

posted by batik billy @ 8:59 am