I've always told people I am not a camper. When I go on vacation, I want to be pampered. I want to feel the luxury of soft linen with thread counts of over 500, a huge bathroom with bathtubs and just the general feeling of being spoiled. But, after "i" found Calaguas on the internet, I decided that I might as well give it a go. The beach looked too beautiful in the photos to pass up. So, I was going to go camping, whether I liked it or not. Eep.
Since I was going camping anyway, I thought, might as well have the full experience. So, instead of going by plane, we decided to hire a bus. Yes a whole bus, for 23 people since that's how many we were! (although, part of it was that we didn't want to spend a whole lot of money). We found a tour guide who prepared an itinerary for us for 3 days 2 nights with the total cost of... (drum roll please) Php4,600 ALL in. This included all our meals, the bus, the resort in Bagasbas for when we surf and the bangka rides. Not bad right?
Going there was pretty smooth sailing. It took us about 8 hours but we left at night so we were asleep for the most part and didn't really feel the long ride. We headed off to Bagasbas first since it was raining when we arrived and Tj our tour guide didn't want to risk riding the bangka in that weather. It was only about 7am when we got settled in but since the waves were looking incredible, we decided to forego sleep and go straight to surfing. We hired a few instructors before we set out for the waves since for most of us, it would be our first go at it. I absolutely loved it. It's definitely a sport I can see myself doing over and over again. "i" definitely seemed to enjoy herself since she stayed to surf even when everyone was too tired to even move!
bagasbas beach (look how far the waves are!) black sand but really soft!
Day 2: Off to Calaguas! It took us about an hour to get to the port from Surfers Dine Inn (where we stayed in Bagasbas), then another hour and a half to get to Calaguas. I can't really say how beautiful the beach was. It is by far, the nicest beach I've been to.
the sand is really soft, your feet sink into it
Now the camping part... Unfortunately, I was pretty miserable. Haha. I'm not really sure if it was because it was raining (August definitely not the time to go to Camarines Norte) and it was cold and wet; or because there was no real bathroom and "bloody mary" was around which made things extra uncomfortable for me; or because sand mites seem to love the scent of my blood and basically just camped on my legs; or because I had a bad night's sleep cuz we only brought a banig to sleep in. But yeah, I was a walking disaster. Thank God the beach was soooo worth it. Otherwise I would've been bitching the whole time. Some people just aren't meant for the outdoors.
the "embassy" tent. it took about 6 people and 2 hours to set this one up.
So, Calaguas was great. The camping part? Not so much. At least not for me. But, I heard from "i" that there's another great beach we can go to. Camping's involved again but if it's as beautiful as Calaguas, I'd be more than willing to make that sacrifice again...
Till the next ander water adbenchur!
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