elle's tinker toes ♥♥♥

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 ~

Dinosaur Island Park is located in Clark Freeport Zone, Angeles City, Pampanga. Since we live in Marilao, its just an hour away via NLEX from Marilao Toll Gate. We exited at Mabalacat Toll Gate, then followed the road that leads to Clark FreePort Zone. The signs are easy to follow, so going there is easy as a breeze! :)

When we visited Ilo-ilo January of this year, the original plan was to side trip in Guimaras. But after a lot of thinking and pondering, Bee and I decided to skip Guimaras and go to Islas Gigantes  instead. We had an amazing experience in Islas Gigantes but I promised myself I'll go back and see The Mango Capital of the Philippines!!! And so here it is...

My friend and I planned that when we reach Bacolod Airport, we'll go separately and we'll just meet again in the airport for our flight back home. It was a good idea as I've always wanted to try travelling solo. As they say (and I believe), it's a very fulfilling and liberating thing to do. But as my departure date came approaching, I started to feel hesitations if I could do it. A 4-day trip was too long for me to roam around all by myself and the thought of leaving Bee in Manila saddens me... I guess, I was not prepared yet. I still need to muster enough courage to finally complete task. Someday. I promised myself. Generally, our itinerary is this:

There has been many stories as to how Siquijor was named as such. According to wikitravel, "Siquijor Island or Isla del Fuego as the Spanish named it, due to the intensity of fire flies lies some 22 km east of Southern Negros . Legend has it that Siquijor rose from the sea during a tremendous thunder storm sited as evidence is fossils and shells which can still be found in Mount Bandila-an, Siquijor's highest point. While the coastline is mostly white sand beaches, oceans full of tropical marine life the interiour is mountainous." Siquijor is interesting in its own way and this is the reason why we chose to visit it in the first place. How we got to Siquijor? We booked a flight (from Manila) to Dumaguete City. In Dumaguete is a port bound for Siquijor. At the time we were in the pier, a ferry scheduled to leave at 1pm was already full and the only option we had was a 3:30 PM schedule. It was only 11:00 AM then.  My friends and I decided to take a ni...

After 5 months of nestling in my own crazy world, I got to finally take a break and set foot on a different soil. Before the our Dumaguete-Siquijor trip, I was excited and a little bit scared at the same time. Excited because of the thought of braving through a land famous for shamans and the like in Siquijor. Scared because one of my friends has this 3rd eye and it frightens me in an exciting way that we might encounter something extremely scary because of this. The Plan Research.. research... We'll be landing in Dumaguete City via Cebu Pacific on Sept 7 at 8am and we'd like to spend one night each in Dumaguete and Siquijor. Upon researching further, I learned that we could day tour in Apo Island!! Swimming with turtles would be so fun. I wondered if we could squeeze this in our itinerary. So as we planned, our itinerary would be like this: