Returning to Suhoton Cove

My first time to Bucas Grande was back in '04 with Millie and Scuba. Four years later, I find that not much has changed... which is a good thing. The boat ride is still epic (6 hours of travel time total), the scenery is still insanely amazing and the water is still crystal clear. The one thing I would change -- that boat ride! Hahaha.

To truly maximize the trip, leave when the sun is just about to broach the horizon. The three hour trip to Bucas Grande gives you a tour of Guyam, Naked Island, Dako and the La Janossa area. Bring enough water, food and other supplies (beer? snacks?) for the day because there is no store at Bucas.

At Bucas Grande, there is a short orientation about the island and its environs. After that, you take a smaller boat into the first cove. So yes, be prepared to spend an additional P200 per head for the tour of the island. The boat you paid for to take you there is exactly that -- just a boat that takes you there.

There a few caves and a lot of great scenery but the true highlight of Suhoton is the Jellyfish Lagoon. Hundreds of stingless jellyfish (two species as far as I know) swim unmolested by predators in this 50 meter deep saltwater cove. The jellyfish actually still have stingers but, due to lack of competition and fear, have devolved their stingers to a point where humans no longer feel the toxins that usually cause great discomfort.

At first it does feel a tad strange to swimming towards jellyfish instead of away from them. But you get used to it in time. And the experience is truly unforgettable.

If you get there early enough, you can take your time swimming and snorkeling. Just make sure you start making your way back to Siargao before 4pm since it will take another 3 hours to get back. And you don't want to be in the open ocean when the sun goes to bed.

My personal favorite itinerary goes like this:
-leave for Suhoton at sunrise
-get there by mid-morning
-hang out until lunch/ leave at noon
-on the way back make stops at Dako for surfing (if there's swell) and Naked Island for photo ops
-head back to Siargao island just in time for dusk
-wash up and then have a full dinner washed down by a cold beer

Some photos:

Show and Tell: I Made it to the Main Page

There is a photo I took of Osot Alcala at Cloud 9 that has been living in the Philippine swellwatch portion of Wetsand , an international surfing site. It is one of my favorite photos primarily because Osot looks absolutely relaxed in it. There he is in a perfect standing barrel at one of the most famous right-handers in the country... with zero tension or stress in his body language. For all we know, he could thinking about what to eat at the Boulevard after his session. I love it... one of my favorite chargers completely at ease at his home break.

Anyway, get this. Today I got an email from one of the peeps at Wetsand. He told me they moved my photo to the main page for the month of July!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH! How stoked am I?!!! Lemme tell you, I'm pretty f*cking stoked. :) I am as stoked as Osot is relaxed in that shot. I could do cartwheels right now if my body would only let me. Heehee.

That is all for this session of show and tell. Thank you to Chuck and Paolo!!! And of course to Osot. If he hadn't been out that day, there would be no photo.

My new favorite surfer!

This has to be quick cos I'm only tapping into someone's wifi signal and I should be going through my photos. But, blog-whore that I am, I felt compelled to fire off a quick blog about my new favorite surfer.

It used to be Matt Hoy. Then I found out some crap about him and he fell from grace.
So Ryan Agustein, my second in line, moved up. He's super cool, super chill and for a guy who can charge Mavericks, is really down-to-earth. Hella humble. We met him two years ago and it's always so nice to see him on the island.

But... then I met JASON SHIBATA!!!



Shibats is one of the mellowest cats I've ever met. PLUS he's really friendly, super down-to-earth, kalog and he rips like maaaaaad! I'm super duper stoked to meet him. Don't get me wrong, I still love Ryan heaps and heaps. But how cool was it to meet Shibata and find out that he's this really great person?

Update as of Oct 1st: Ryan and Shibats are equal first with me. Super cool, super nice, super surfers. Hard to beat that kind of combination.

Yun lang, sharing from a surf aid.

And already I miss them...

It's my first morning back in Manila. And after the pattern of the last ten days, it feels strange to wake up in my own bed... in my own room. It doesn't fit into my day anymore to walk to a kitchen and jusy grab a glass of juice from the fridge. Most of all, how odd to be back in the city and so far away from the island. Far from Siargao's perfect office view and even more perfect waves.

But more than anything... it's really this that I miss the most right now:


Siargao only feels like Neverland... but unlike it, these kids do grow up. These are my new batch of grommets. My first batch has grown up and declared themselves too old to be hugged, too old to be following my around the island, and definitely too old to be kissed and coddled. So these groms are my ones from last year... a little bit older... but young enough still to think it's cool to hang with "Ate Kage."(In photo: Mike, Ken, Lorse, Enteng, Phillip)

Breakfast beckons. How odd that I can now have pretty much anything I want for brek -- waffles, bacon, three cheese toast, garlic rice - but I would much rather be sitting in Ate Layda's store as the morning sunlight drifts through the trees, sipping on a coffee and budgeting my meal by having only a single egg with toast.

Wahines in the Water: full version

I submitted this article to Elev8 Magazine's second issue. The last few paragraphs didn't come out due to a printing glitch. So here is the full article in all its unedited self.

There was a time that the idea of women surfing brought to mind Gidget, the Hollywood Beach Blanket icon. While cute and perky, she didn’t quite portray the most empowering image of female surfers.

In recent years, the presence big-wave riders such as Layne Beachley, Malia Kamisugi, power wahines the likes of Sofia Mulanovich, Keala Kennely and new talents like Chelsea Georgeson have made it quite clear that there is room for bikinis in the land of boardshorts. Whether it is in Australia, Hawaii or as far south as Brasil, women are definitely holding their own in the liquid arena.

Here in our neck of the world, more and more women are paddling out and taking waves in a sport more often than not designated for men. Point in case – the Philippine Surf Federation’s 2005 Circuit included an all-women’s surf competition was held at Siargao island’s Cloud 9, a right hander famous for its hollow barrels.

Anyone who watched these Filipinas charge Cloud 9 that year came away with much respect for them. These girls grew up in a line-up peppered with boys. This is especially the case for Nildie Blancada and Manet Alcala (Siargao) and Mocca Edusma (Daet) where they are often the only females out with the boys.

The event was seen as a gigantic step forward in the arena of women’s surfing. This year, the competition saw an even larger contingent of participants, including Australian pro surfers Sheridan Shields, Lyndsay Noyes as well as local wahines hailing from all over the country. The ripple effect of seeing women taking on monster waves has inspired a younger set of girls to get on a board and get in there. Only months after the comp girls as young as 6 began paddling out with Siargao’s normally all-male grommet posse.

Even back in Manila, the number of wahine weekend warriors has tripled in the last two years. The membership roster of the Manila Surfers’ Association has a nearly equal number of men and women.

On a personal level, it is not only empowering to see more girls in the line-up. It is, quite simply, more enjoyable. I am no longer the only girl on a weekend road trip, having to put up with pranks, fart jokes or actual farts. Now, there is always at least one other female to talk to about the more substantial aspects of life, namely: shopping, shoes and spas.

I am not a professional surfer. I am not even an intermediate level surfer. What I am is a chick with a waxed stick that enjoys every wave that she gets, whether it’s a wall that just keeps going and going or a party wave shared with four other friends. And it’s just fun that now, the chances are higher that those friends I share that one ride with are also fellow females.

From observations and conversations with other female surfers (and yes, even in the line-up, we girls like to yack it up), it seems that The Philippines is among the best places to be a chick in the line-up. The boys are less aggressive, more accommodating and actually quite encouraging. I don’t know if it is the way that Filipinos are raised to respect women, if it is the intrinsically mellow personality of Filipinos in general or a combination of both that makes these local line-ups a good place to be a woman surfer. Granted each line-up will have its fair share of macho men that will never see women as equals in the water. But they are, thankfully, the exception and not the norm.

My good friend Mille Fairhall is a free surfer who surfed competitively in her teen years. She shuttles back and forth between her two homelands of Australia and the Philippines. We were talking once about the state of women’s surfing in the Philippines and she said “There have been a few women who have dared to challenge the stereotype (that surfing is for boys). And I think that gender has no relevance on a wave. If women can get past that intimidation factor, the old guard thoughts and physical inhibitions there would be a lot more of us out there… enjoying surfing for what it is.”

By the way, Millie charges and rips so if you happen to be one of the rare aggro boys, don’t even think about asking her to move to the shoulder.

Surf Videos from the Pinas

Surf videos by my friends Paolo and Kerwin. All shot in various breaks in the Philippines and featuring some seriously hype local talent:







Big ups to them both. Watch out for the video Pao is putting together of our sick surf session at a secret spot in Siargao.

Siargao Stories: 2002

(fair warning: this is going to be a really long series as I did this as a daily travel journal. but in the interest of armchair traveling, i've cut it down into five segments.)

Siargao Stories:

September 26 to 29, 2002

Thursday.

Kaz and I meet up at the airport at the ungodly hour of 8 a.m. for our flight from Manila to Cebu. Nothing much happens so I’ll skip the rest of this part and take you straight to us at the Surigao airport where our Provincial Office contact takes us to the pier for the last leg of our trip – the boat ride to Siargao.

The boat is small but fast. And, thankfully, airconditioned. I say that only because our seats were below deck so you can just imagine what it would have been like to sit there for two hours without any source of air. We got to our seats and lo and behold – they were playing a Westlife VCD on the tv!

Kaz: They aren’t going to play that vcd for the whole trip are they?
Kage: Two hours of Westlife. In a boat. Welcome to hell.

But once the boat pulled out of the dock they switched over to a real movie. Something with lots of guns, biochemical warfare and, of all possible action has-beens, Dolph Lungdren.

Kage: I don’t know if this is better or worse than having to watch Westlife.
Kaz: Let’s nap instead.

So we did.

We land in Siargao at 430pm. We get off the dock. And our contact person on the island is not there to meet us. Fuck. I get the local version of a motorcycle called the habal-habal to take us to Cloud Nine, where I figure most of the people are going to be (it’s where the competition is held). Kaz had never been on a motorcycle. And these babies have extra long seats to accommodate more than one passenger. In fact, last year there were four of us plus the driver on one of those puppies.

Anyway.

We were there for an adventure right? So off we went for a twenty minute habal-habal ride to Cloud Nine. Basically, we get to Cloud Nine and I see people I’d met two years ago. One of them is this sweet girl Zeny who works for the Department of Tourism. Introductions all around and much discussion about where the hell Kaz and I are supposed to be staying. Zeny suggests that we head over with them to Cabuntog resort which is where the secretariat office is always located (its also where the nightly parties are held but that’s another part of this story). To cut this portion short since not a lot of excitement happens we eventually do hook up with our contact (Romy) at Cabuntog. We sit on the beach with our feet in the sand drinking ice cold San Miguels and are told that for one night we will be staying at one place then we’ll be moved to where we really are supposed to be staying for the rest of our trip. A little complicated but... no worries.

We have dinner at White Sand then head over to Gaga’s place to unload our things, wash up and get ready for the night’s festivities at Cabuntog. We meet up with some people I’d met before like Ana and her (then) boyfriend Alex and some of the other local surfers… not really friends friends but not really acquaintances. You know? They’re fun to be with and really nice people to boot. They introduced us to the other people they are hanging out with. Among them were these two guys from Santa Cruz California – Django and Joel. They’d been to the country before so they kind of knew what being in the Philippines was about. Turns out Django is a lifeguard and Joel is studying astrophysics. They had another friend Matt with them but we didn’t get to meet him that night. Anyway, we sat on the beach facing the stage where some band is about to play. As cover bands go, it was a pretty bad band. So we didn’t listen to them much really.

We met this one other guy Nigel who was super funny. The kind of person who just exudes stoke. He’s this student who managed to find a program that allows him to study in other countries and have those units credited. He’d been in Siargao for like two weeks already I think. About Nigel… hmmm… it’s hard to explain but the way I told Kaz was that he’s the kind of person you want to stick in your back pocket and bring home with you. He had this great vibe going on. And the way he talked about his family made you want to meet them cos they sound so cool.

By like midnight, maybe a little past it, Kaz and I were tired. We’d been traveling all day. So we decided to just turn in so we could be more rested for the next day. Someone gave us a ride back to Gaga’s place and wouldn’t you know it… the door was locked and we didn’t have a key. Hahahahaha. So we sat out by the shore for a while and waited for people to come home. We didn’t have to wait for long though. Man, that was good sleep. I had a pounding headache from the beer and the being tired. But I slept really well. I assume Kaz did too cos she was out like a light.

And thus ended day one on the island.

for photos go to: http://www.pbase.com/kage/siargao