ERYTHING starts with strangeness and being estranged: unfamiliar
faces in the resort’s restaurant, unfamiliar laughter on the beach, a
familiar sleeping position on an unfamiliar figure in the airport lobby,
familiar driving on an unfamiliar road with unfamiliar hands behind the
wheel. Everything starts with strangeness and being estranged.
It took a confident “Hi, where are you from?” at the resort’s
restaurant to make strangeness and being estranged less intimidating.
A simple hi, when permitted, can superficially lead to adding yet
another friend on Facebook or can favorably lead to a serious
conversation.
It was “Hi, where are you from?” that brought me to two
Filipino-American brothers in Siargao: David, “the open, never-ending
book” to use his own words and Brian, “the opposite.”
General Luna's boulevard is a white-sand beach itself, which is more
than enough for any beach bumper. (Photo by Jona Branzuela Bering)
David echoed my sentiment that our country is both blessed and cursed
by being a nation of so many islands. In other countries, he said, it
was so much easier to hop on a bus, motorbike, or pedicab to get to a
new place and experience some diversity. In our country, it is to jump
on a plane and see another island, after already seeing a similar one.
But I wanted to contend that it is the beaches that look similar.
Islands are never the same. Cebu can never be Siargao. I cannot be
convinced otherwise.
Indeed, there are only so many beaches one can take. But really, it was not the beaches, was it? They play as backdrops or
postscripts that can be skipped without feeling guilty.
It is the company and the experience that linger, matter, and tease
the memory once the soles have kissed another similar-looking shore.
Not entirely barren Naked Island
“There is nothing here!” exclaimed David.
“There is! Sand!” I countered.
From General Luna’s port, the boatman brought us to a yet another
naked island. Brittania, Surigao del Sur has its naked island; Bohol,
Batangas, and Cebu have their respective virgin islands. It will not be
surprising to know there are five or ten islands named naked and virgin
in our country. These islands ironically do not live up to their names.
Naked islands—which are too narrow and often become invisible when
tide arrives—are the home of small, often unnoticed, living things;
while thousands of feet beat up virgin islands.
Siargao’s Naked Island, might be the less “charactered” compared to
Guyam and Daku, but it is far from being naked. It has patches of
greens, tourists taking their pictures, crabs escaping to their holes, a
dead log lying on the shallow waters, empty beautiful shells that would
soon join the plurality of my shell collection.
It is, from the chest-deep water, like a caricature of an old man’s
head with receding hair, with three or four strands standing erect on
his crown.
Daku island is the biggest among the three islands of Siargao. (Photo by Jona Branzuela Bering)
Blue green Daku
“Tell me they are not terrorists, right?” Brian joked while looking
at the masked men aboard a fishing boat docked on the shore.
Indeed, they could be mistaken for such. Some faces were covered with
worn-out -shirts, some wore a smirk. But their audible banter and
laughter—not to mention the buoys and nets aboard—gave them away. Their
fishing boat roared. They were left to fish in the vast Pacific. I
jokingly heaved as a sign of relief since I am commonly mistaken for a
scorched Korean traveler. Brian heaved. For real or jokingly, I could
not tell.
Mindanao—especially its northern shores that Surigao del Norte is
part of—does not convey the stereotypes common of this easternmost
island in the Philippines: dangerous, terrorist-infested. It is rather
friendly and comfortable where everyone speaks my language with a sexy
curb, where strangers do not hesitate to share a joke or two, where I do
not doubt when locals say “sakay lang og motor padung Dapa, ’day (Just
ride a bike to Dapa, ’day).”
We took a dip with the kids and saw a huge cockle farmed by a fisher. It was my first to see a cockle as huge as that.
Daku is Bisaya for big, and aptly, it is the biggest among the
three. Unlike the other two islands, the palm-cocooned Daku houses a
friendly community.
At four in the afternoon, everything looked green, blue, clear.
Momentarily, I wanted to believe that their mother’s homeland could
offer happy colors, green trees, blue sky. And the rest does not matter.
Guyam at dusk
Guyam, meaning little, is a green dent in the sea visible from
General Luna’s (GL) boulevard. Unlike Naked, Guyam must pride itself in
being honest. I surmised it would only take five minutes to round the
islet. Its shore fronting General Luna is the platitude of tropical
white-sand, its other side rocky.
“I-dritso palang ni nila sa Guyam, (If only they could connect this
[boardwalk] to Guyam),” I heard a teenager say to her companion at GL’s
boardwalk, a day before I encountered Brian and David. Connecting an
island to an islet with a boardwalk seemed like a romantic idea that
appealed to me.
From Guyam, GL looked wade-able. With the presence of Brian and
David, I broke off from the notion of islands being cut for romance.
Traveling is a season of encounters. It is a season to let the strange be familiar, the familiar strange.
Meeting them made me affirm David’s words that “often the poorest
people are the richest. Though they lack in material belongings, they
prosper in the more important things like serenity. Being content with
little things is priceless.” Say, the timid sliding of the sun behind
Siargao’s horns—an ordinary, priceless scene on this side of the world.
And as we waited for their mother’s homeland to turn dusky one April day; theirs—approximately eight thousand air miles from the
Philippines—just had the same sun peek behind high-rises.
*Jona Branzuela Bering scales mountains, treks rivers, combs beaches,
hops towns, takes photographs, and searches for stories, stanzas, and
silence. She always travels with a backpack, books, pens, and notebooks.
She blogs at backpackingwithabook.com. (Jona Branzuela Bering)
Source: Sunstar
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