Hundred Memories

Hundred Islands was the beach stop for me and my friends this year (first of many many stops hopefully).

I was with R., I., and J.



We left for Pangasinan on Friday. We sorta miscalculated the hours on the trip, we left at 12 m.n. and thought we'd arrive there at 5:30 a.m. But nope, we were there at 3:30 a.m.!

I. had said that some staff of Mayor Braganza had reserved a room for us but when we were there and sought somebody named "Thelma", Marjorie, the hotel staff, said she didn't know her.(Turns out later on that Thelma was with the boat ticketing office).

"Try Louise,"I told Isao. (Hehehe).

It took a little while before we could find a substitute room. Rey was helpful enough to use the room with 14 (!) beds, which we aptly called "the dorm". Since we arrived there very early, we decided to sleep a little bit and woke up at around 8 a.m. If it weren't for the noisy Koreans, we would have slept the whole day.

First Island



After breakfast, we set out to check out our first island: Marcos Island. It was a medium sized island with a dash of shoreline. Jann brought banig so that's where we sat and placed our things.

All we did there was drink beer, eat, sunbathe, eat again, sunbathe again until we met Claire, a four-year old Ilocana lovinlgy called "Basang."


Claire

You can tell from the color of Claire’s skin that she has spent half a day under the sun and she was obviously having fun. She was oblivious to our arrival. Just a couple of meters away from the shoreline, where the level was not even knee-deep, Claire would “dive” and flap her little feet. And then she would emerge, parting her hair that has covered part of her face, breathe deep and dive again.

Her father, J.R., striked up a conversation with our group and offered Claire’s floater. It was small but enough to carry our bodyweight. It was for babies actually. That’s when we asked Claire’s name. Of course, the little girl didn’t mind us. She was fine having fun by herself.
Claire had four instant yayas and yayo with us. At one point, I asked her if she wanted some sunoil on her which, to my surprise, she liked, never mind if the oil wouldn’t help her much since her skin was already dark.



After lunch, that’s when Claire really opened up. She was pulling a sea grass so I pulled my pamangkin tricks and pretended that it was hair. Placed the seagrass on her head and said it was such a beautiful and long hair to have on her head. She liked it. And reciprocated. She asked that I kneel down so she could put the seagrass and on my head. When she did, I gamely posed and asked her to pretend she was having my picture taken.

“Picture! Picture!” I said.

“Click!” she responded, quickly opening up both her palms as if to immitate a camera’s flashbulb.

(more, photos on flickr badge)