Survivor Caramoan, Part 1

We were thinking of having vacations in unexplored getaways with names our friends would not even be able to pronounce. Mango extended this invitation to trailblaze the “unexplored” Caramoan Peninsula, a group of islands at the tip of Camarines Sur, Bicol region, and to host the expedition in Albay (her hometown) with a side trip (take note, just a side trip) to the world-famous Donsol in Sorsogon, the migratory route of whalesharks locally known as butanding.

The prospect of Caramoan alone made Sam, Ems and Mai brag to their friends who turned green with envy. Caramoan, it turns out, is not that unfamiliar – everyone has already heard of the place, no one is brave enough just yet to wander far from the comforts of Boracay or Galera.

We really didn’t have plans to be uncomfortable ourselves. To save exploration time, we decided to experience Caramoan exactly the way it was described in a blog we tumbled upon. Plagiarize – guess that’s the classic tourism strategy – read the brochures, read the write-ups, relive the blogs, copy the postcards…

But it was a mistake to plagiarize. First of all, we did not end up in the more famous Gota beach. Caramoan has several beaches, islands and islets, and you can just choose your own island like create your own fantasy, pitch tent, camp, swim and explore your island. Since we followed the blog, we looked for Gota beach, but the place was closed for the shooting of the international reality show, Survivor.

What to do next? Island politics dictates that you go straight to the mayor. We raised issues like public land being closed for private use, lack of community consultation, development aggression, blah, blah, blah. But the mayor, bypassed by the governor, just sighed, short of saying “I’m the victim here.”

Anyway, the mayor instructed his councilor to lend us his boat and guide us to the mayor’s island. That started our great misadventures and shift to survival mode.

We were sailing for about an hour when we decided to have lunch in the councilor’s island.

Then we dropped our things in the mayor’s island and sailed again, touring the peninsula and searching for our perfect island.


Finally we decided to take a dip in an island with only one house, a carabao atop a hill, and a wide sand bar that connects the island to another island and that you can walk on during low tide.

We decided to stay. Mango and I had to go back to the mayor’s island to get our things while the rest explored the hill where we would pitch our tents.

That's me on the boat, waiting for Mango. Postcard-perfect? Well, that was the calm before the storm!