elle's tinker toes ♥♥♥

Travel Date: August 6, 2014 We reached Nogas Island from Manila by taking Cebu Pacific via Iloilo. Then from Iloilo we took a cab and headed to Oton Terminal where Ceres buses plight to San Jose via Anini-y. There are two routes to reach San Jose. One, is passing through the sea side and the other one is passing through the mountain. You don't want to pass through the latter as it would skip Anini-y so better take extra step to confirm this from the driver. Travel time is 1.5 hour to 2 hours Good thing the road is paved, so travel experience was smooth and easy. I surely enjoyed the view of the sea!!

Overnight camping is what brought us here. There could have been other places but what made us pick this place is that I actually have never been to Bataan. At 5AM, we stuffed our bags and tent in the car and drove towards Bataan.

I chanced upon Subic Waterfront Resort and Hotel for its budget friendly accommodation. For a Premium Suites, it's only P1650 per night with free set breakfast for 2. Not bad. Making reservations on their website - http://www.subicwaterfronthotel.com - was easy. Confirmation was quickly sent to my email address.

On our second day, we all woke up at 4am after sleeping so early the previous day. Imagine, we were all in zzzzzzzz at 6pm! We were supposed to wake up at 9pm to party at downtown but I guess our restlessness took over. We ate Tapsilog at a nearby eatery just along Canelar Street, around 250 meters from our pension. It is open 24/7. Streetlights illuminated the road and we're down walking silently and peacefully at 4:30 AM.

I've seen a black sand beach, gray sand beach, yellow sand beach, white powdery sand beach, but never a pink sand beach. This beach can only be found in Great Sta Cruz Island in Zamboanga and when I learned about this, I knew it was time to mark the map! We booked plane tickets waaaayy even before the Zamboanga seige happened in 2013. As February 7 2014 was approaching, I was feeling doubtful if it's worth the visit considering the risk.  But yes, we came and we saw and we bombed... the hell out of the experience!   ~ o ~ o ~