it was a rainy day when we arrived in boracay. i watched the
propeller slowly come to a halt and quickly resented how unwelcoming the gray
sky was. this was the sequel to our summer island trip—the first being too
short, and perhaps too planned for my kind of getaway. it is not my thing to
plan, but with two kids in tow my planner had reinvented itself into an
austere, decisive, somewhat organized one, from something that impersonated the
“dynamic” character of its owner. my earth angel would use the words
“indecisive” and “convulsive”, really.
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| don vito ristorante |
we spent the first two weeks getting our hands on seafood—a
lot of it, and going to restaurants that we did not have the chance to try on
our previous trip. big eaters like us really put food on top of our inverted
triangle of activities.
i was raised in the visayas so i’m no stranger to boracay. i
would like to save the story of my very first visit to the worshipped white
beach for another post though. i always get giddy whenever i step back and
recall those days when boracay only relied on the moon for light at night.
we booked a roundtrip ticket to boracay in july 2013. we
intended to stay for two weeks only-- for a come-what-may (weather wise)
vacation, but that was not what really happened.
one afternoon, we walked toward the tip of station three and
found ourselves in a private paradise, walking past a couple of abandoned and
almost decaying resorts. the rock-ribbed
end of that side of the four-kilometer long beach was not only beautiful but a
welcoming sight after we walked away from a very busy beach at station two.
waves splashed indignantly against the rocks as if in a rhythmic duet with the
sound of the rains that came and went. a few times we had to take shelter under
low-bending trees so our two-year-old daughter would not get drenched (but who
insisted on running under the rain anyway). lesson learned: you can never tell
someone to stay dry if he or she is in a swimsuit.
that sunday afternoon we were finally able to do what we
longed for the kids to do for the longest time—to stop reading about the good
things from the books and start doing them, like picking up shells from the
shore, burying their feet in the sand, running around like they owned the island
and walking to nowhere and not caring where they would end up.
that sunday would also have been our last day on the island.
we (deliberately) missed our flight the next day and stayed for the next five
months.
