Wandersluts: The Kaladkarin Chronicles

By Land or By Sea--There's More than One Way to Enjoy the Weekend in Laiya

It was a parade like no other. I was at its tail end, wondering what the locals thought about this queer sight passing before them: twenty people, backpackers all, each holding an umbrella of a different color from the person after and before, walking between fishing boats, playing children, and nipa beach huts, trudging up the gleaming white Laiya shoreline in the smoldering heat of high noon, making a beeline toward Mt. Daguldol.

On a sunny Saturday morning a year before, I boarded a van bound for Lipa and, after an eternity of vehicle transfers, found myself walking down a dirt road, past a small cemetery, into the arms of an inviting blue-green sea. That was my first time in Laiya. I had come to cover an annual off-road triathlon for a travel magazine. Most people come to Laiya because Matabungkay and Calatagan have become overtouristed, and Anilao caters more to divers and windsurfers. Discriminating beachineers needed to find a new refuge along the Batangas coast.

Laiya has been that refuge for some years now. Seven kilometers of butter-white sand rising up from the calm, but sometimes temperamental, waters of Sigayan Bay. Its eastern half (before the town proper) is an ideal swimming and picnic beach; the sand here is much finer and the shore-slope more gradual. The western shore (after the town proper, all the way to Hugom), on the other hand, though lacking in the raw material for sand castles and notorious for sudden drop-offs, is teeming with marine life. Snorkelers have sometimes been blessed with sightings of shy but friendly sea turtles.

But there’s more to a weekend in Laiya than sand and sea. After more than thirty minutes of walking on the shore, we finally left the sound of crashing waves and stepped into the forests of Mt. Daguldol, where a different symphony greeted us: gentle-breeze rustling leaves, punctuated by bird calls. The heat, though, would not let up. We were out of the sun, but the lush vegetation, while providing shade, also trapped heat and moisture rising from the ground. Fortunately, the discomfort was easily dispelled by a tall, cold bottle of Coca-cola and fresh buko juice. The houses along the trail always had enough for everyone.

Three hours later, I had all but forgotten the curious stares we summoned on the beach and the sweltering trek inside Daguldol’s forest line. I was swaying contentedly in a hammock strung between two coconut trees in the middle of the Niyugan campsite. Colorful tents had sprouted all over the sloping field of carabao grass. The smell of dinner and fresh brewed coffee was in the air. The sun was lazily descending from the sky. It was soon lost behind one of the higher peaks. Beyond it, I knew, lay the sea, and its silent, secretive turtles. (JG)

posted by outsidebound @ 12:53 PM