Life As A Tumbleweed

Last Holy Week I went on a semi-spontaneous trip with the family to Caramoan, Camarines Sur. It’s famous as the setting of Survivor France, and has since also been the setting of Survivor Serbia and a bunch of other Survivor franchises. It’s a fourteen-hour trip by land from Manila, which to my surprise, wasn’t as hard as I assumed it would be. Apart from our usual car games, most of which involved a whole lot of geekery, the South Luzon countryside kept me enthralled. I’ve been to enough drives now that I could kind of distinguish nuances in the country’s landscape, and I must say the Bicol Region is one of my favorites. There’s just something about its combination of pastures, plantations and mountains that’s extra scenic. It even allowed me a glimpse of Mt. Mayon’s perfect tip! Hee.

After the land travel, it was another two hours on boat to the islands of Caramoan. Our hotel was pretty cool. They welcomed us with a lunch of big fat lobsters, which would have cost as much as our entire stay had it been in Manila. It was relaxed the rest of the day as we had to recuperate from being on the road so long. Then the following days were spent communing with the more obscure virgin isles of the Philippines.

All in all, I found Caramoan to be pretty. It’s just that I wasn’t able to see all of it, because tides didn’t permit it when we were there so I’m sure I could have been more awed. We only went to 3 islands, and the town proper. The last island we visited though was pretty frikkin epic. I don’t have shots of its lush and varied vegetation because I couldn’t get myself out of the crystalline waters long enough. But  seriously. It’s the quintessential, stereotypical island paradise, complete with pink, orange, yellow wild flower trees and kingfishers.

So yeah. I’m going back. Meanwhile, enjoy my favorite shots from the trip. (I would post more, except that I have very limited space here now so I’m keeping the numbers down until I find a new home for us. Meh.)