I've been to Biliran once before, about six or seven years ago, on our way to Higatangan Island. And I've never had the chance to go back and explore until last week.

Since my weekend trips in January, I've been telling myself I needed a real vacation, and so I had been planning this long weekend in Malapascua Island. However, the weather has just been terrible recently, and summer has not decided to kiss the Visayan islands just yet. Hence, I decided to keep my silver for sunnier days and I headed, instead, for a long weekend retreat to the nearer Biliran Island.

A high school classmate lives in Naval, the capital of Biliran, and he grew up by a beach resort owned by his uncle. My high school classmates had gone there several times before, but for some reason I've never made it to any of the past trips. Anyhow, with a few text messages, I reserved a cottage on the hillside and ventured to find the place on my own.

I booked a seat on the 3:30pm Duptours van (Sto. Nino St., Tacloban City). [Tip: Book a seat by phone] The trip to Naval takes between 2 and 2.5 hours. I got there a bit after dark so I was not able to catch a jeepney or multicab anymore. There are many motorcycles that can take you there, but if you are spending more than a couple of days and have a lot of stuff with you (like I did), you might just want to take an earlier trip so you can catch the jeepney. Take the one for Kawayan, and tell the driver to drop you off at VRC Beach Resort (I recommend their lodging over Agta Beach Resort's, though Agta is the name of the beach and is the more popular reference). I didn't know there were two lodging places though, and I had mistakenly asked the driver to take me to Agta Beach Resort, only to find out that my reservation was at VRC on the adjacent property. But it all went well in the end and I found my cottage.

I could NOT believe what I was getting for Php200 (about USD 4!!!) per night. It was a nice hillside cottage, with a little balcony overlooking the beach, a little sink on the side for washing utensils (or swimwear), nice wooden beds with comfy mattresses, a spacious bathroom and a fridge that you could use only for an additional Php100 (USD 2) per day. I was sharing the cottage with some friends who were going to catch up over the weekend. I proceeded to take my stuff out and "inhabit" the cottage. The first friend showed up about an hour later and we went down to the resort pantry to get dinner. They willingly cooked fish sinigang for my starving friend, and I decided to bunk in early mainly because it was such a good place to get a nice, long and restful sleep.

The next day, we went to Naval to get food and drinks. We spent a long, lazy Friday just eating and reading. Our high school friend from Naval dropped by and promised us a boat ride the following day to the island right across Agta beach. I finished reading Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, which was a very appropriate reading for where I was. It is such a beautiful, inspiring story about an old man who went for 84 days without catching anything, and on the 85th day he finally hooked a great marlin, bigger than his boat, and after a long and tedious fight tried to bring it home only to lose all the meat to the sharks that came his way. It is a beautiful analogy for our struggle in life to go after what we want---enduring all the hardships, the inevitable investments and the tradeoffs that can and will get in our way of achieving it. The story teaches that in the end, what matters is not keeping what we got, but being able to get it, because it is not the prize that matters, but the good fight we put up to get it. It isn't the destination, but the wonderful journey getting there. Anyhow, I'll do my symbolisms analysis and book review somewhere else, but it is a nice book to bring with you to the beach. As I was reading it, it was dusk and I could see fishermen getting out to sea with their incandescent lamps, and as the night got deeper, I could see the spots of yellow in the same places that they were at dusk. It was fascinating. I wonder how that night's catch was.

Saturday came and three more friends arrived. We had breakfast and hit the beach for a few minutes while we waited for the boatman who was going to take us to the neighboring Dalutan Island. [see next journal]

We spent a couple of hours in the island and got back to Agta beach to swim some more. The next day, we rented two kayaks and went cruising as far as the kayaks could take us (and as far as the locals' tolerance for a bikini-clad girl [not me] would allow). It was an uberfun way to get a tan (or a sunburn, since we're Asians and we're already darker than tan). We got back to the cottage and ordered a lunch of noodles and roasted chicken. Our high school friend/host sent us some grilled tangigue and fish kinilaw. Island food, yum!