My Travel: Alaminos, Pangasinan
- Kylene Adorkable .
- Jan 15, 2017
- 5 min read
I haven't been to a lot of places, even in my own country; the Philippines. Philippines is known for its 7,107 islands (varies when it's high tide or low tide), before January 14, 2017, I've only been to 4 islands (excluding Luzon which where I'm born and raised.) Mindanao, Panay, Guimaras and Boracay. Now I've been to 129 islands, well technically, since I went to the Hundred Island tour thing in Alaminos, Pangasinan with my family and my cousin who returned from America for a visit. Let's start from the beginning of this journey for a better understanding what I mean.
January 14, 2017 ━ My family and I woke up at one in the morning because our tour van picked us up from our house to drive us to Pangasinan and places that were included in our tour package. So we all got ready and packed our stuff and left our house for a five hour drive to our location. We all fell asleep on our whole drive until we reached our first stop, McDonald's. Just kidding, we had to stop for breakfast at McDonald's at six, my family prefers McDonald's breakfast than Jollibee so we had to wait for 6 AM to have breakfast since we arrived at Alaminos at 5:30 AM and we were all hungry. We had to start our day right, right? After our breakfast we went to our first destination, St. James the Great Parish in Balinao, Pangasinan.
We looked around and took a few photos, our tour guides weren't much help, they were more of chauffeurs than guides, so I had to Google what's so special about this place that they drove us here and my search wasn't that disappointing, especially knowing that this was a Spanish colonial church made our of black coral stones. (Literally the first thing I saw on Google.) After that we went to the Enchanted Cave in Bolinao, Pangasinan.
If you're like me who is afraid of drowning because you don't know how to swim, you won't appreciate the Enchanted Cave but you will enjoy the scenery going there and the stalactite (the hanging rocks from the ceiling), I enjoy looking at rock formations, sue me. If you know how to swim or own your own life vest than you'll enjoy it because, according to my family the water is cold and refreshing. Oh, I forgot to tell you, the Enchanted Cave has a natural spring in it.
The water is so clear that you think that the middle portion is shallow but in reality it's 7ft. deep. When we arrived at the cave, it was still low tide, but when it's high tide the water reaches up to 11ft. (according to our guide). The cave is a bit stuffy, so after your swim you won't get that chilly. After our trip to the Enchanted Cave we headed off to Patar Beach
We arrived at the beach around 10am, so we had a lot of time to enjoy the sun and the water, we requested our guides to bring us to a place with a few people, and they didn't fail us, we were brought to a nice place, we were able to rent a hut for only 500Php. For 500 pesos the place was good enough. The only downside is that you have to pay to use the bathroom, and the price depends on what you will do. If you want to shower you have to pay 15Php, wanna take a dump, you have to pay 10Php and just a quick wee for a price of 5Php. I forgot the name of the place, but it's somewhere there. We also had the most satisfying lunch, with grilled fish and hotdogs and some yummy rice.
I'm not really much of an ocean person because of those mosquito like things in the water when the water is dirty, but here at Patar Beach, it was clean that I didn't feel anything bite me, or feel itchy afterwards. The sand is nice and white, but there are a lot of rocks so I recommend you wear aqua shoes or something to protect your feet.
When we arrived there it was a low tide, so there were still a lot of rocks to walk through and you have to look for small pools just so that you could enjoy like dipping your body in the water and not to have to walk far, but around one in the afternoon, the currents started to get stronger and the water level was starting to rise, so we were able to enjoy the water a bit more. And around two in the afternoon we left and headed to the hotel that we were going to stay in, Villa Antonin Hotel & Restaurant. I wasn't able to take a photo of it, but it was a cute place for a budgeted trip, a bit small rooms and you can only use the WiFi in the lobby, breakfast though was good. Kudos to that.
The next day we went island hoping at Alaminos. Alaminos is where you go to for the Hundred Island tour. We woke up at 6:45 AM for breakfast and left the place at 8AM to start the tour. We rode this cute bangka, I think the name of the bangka was Jherry. Our first island was he Governor's Island.
The island has a zipline and a viewing area that you have to trek to just to see the 125 islands. Governor's Island is also connected to the Virgin Island, it's called the Virgin Island because no one lives on the island. You have to cross a bridge and climb a lot of stairs. It's fun but very tiring, so I suggest you bring lots of water and the best flip flops you have.
The water in Alaminos is so clean that you could also see the tawilis fishes swimming in the ocean. The sand is also fine, you can take the zip line going to the Virgin Island as well, but my family chose to walk because we had our bags with us and as well as I'm afraid of heights and the fee is 250Php, so we just passed the zip line and trekked to the other island. After some photos and testing my balance (because of the floating bridge that connects the two islands), we moved to our next island which was Scout Island, I didn't took photos there because I just wanted to swim. After that we just went from island to island to swim. We only stayed at Alaminos for a night, so after our island hoping we went back to the hotel and packed our stuff and checked out. Then off we go, back to Manila.
I really had a great time at Alaminos, and I want to repeat the experience as well. I hope I can do it all over again. Hope you enjoyed and I left you wanting for more. I might post a video that I'll make of our trip. As I was writing this, I just got back home and felt like I wanted to write about it. Talk to you guys soon!
with love,
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