A couple of weekends ago, we went to Puerto Galera at the invitation of Justin, a recent MSU graduate who is interning at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Puerto Galera is a fairly well known tourist destination on the island of Mindoro. We made the trip with 8 of our friends and about 14 people that Justin works with at IRRI. It was quite a diverse group; there were Filipino, American, Mexican, Australian, German (or maybe Polish?), Irish, and British people along for the fun. Around 8:30 Saturday morning, we all piled into 5 cars and headed to Batangas. From Batangas, we took a private boat to Puerto Galera. The boat ride probably took about an hour and a half, but it was pretty cool – we got to see flying fish!! They are so tiny, but they fly what seems like a good 7-8 meters!
This is not our boat, but it was almost exactly the same – pretty cool J
When we pulled into Puerto Galera, some of the local boys ran out to the boat to hold onto it as it bobbed in the waves.
Our resort at night…I was so excited to get in the water, I forgot to take pictures during the day!
When we got to the resort, we checked in and looked around a bit. It was a cloudy day, but we hadn’t been to the beach yet, so we all got our bathing suits on and went to play in the water. Our resort was on a private beach, but everyone was talking about White Beach, so we went to go check it out. Since none of us had ever been there, we thought the only way to get there was to walk around the massive rocks…later that night we found out we were wrong!
We spent about 20 minutes climbing over rocks like this to make it to White Beach.
After making it to White Beach, we found out that our resort had ocean kayaks that we could use for free. So we made our way back to the resort, and took them out and pretty much played around on the water for the rest of the day. At night, we went back to White Beach…on a road we didn’t know existed. We got some dinner and watched the fire dancers on the beach, which was really cool. We learned that Puerto Galera is famous for its cross dressers – we were told none of the performers that looked female were actually female!
Too cool!
After dinner, we walked around on the beach and ended up in a videoke bar. I was forced to sing a duet with Jose. I think we were so bad the machine couldn’t even give us a score!! The other people in our group all made up for our poor performance though J By far, the best performers in the bar were a group of cross dressers – they sang perfectly and their dancing was pretty entertaining too!
The next morning we got up and pretty much left right away, since the people with the cars were staying another night and we didn’t know how long it would take to get back using public transportation. We didn’t forget to take a picture with the MSU flag though! Gotta show our Spartan pride, even when we are on the other side of the world!
Go Green!
On the way back to Batangas, we took the ferry. It was basically a larger version of the private boat we took to Puerto Galera. It was really windy that day and the waves were rocking the boat really bad. It was raining, so they pulled down the side curtain things – meaning there was no fresh air, so that didn’t help at all. A lot of people felt really sick, and one woman even threw up! The boat ride took about two and a half hours, but thankfully we made it back safe. Anyway, a boat, two buses, a jeepney, and 6 hours later, we finally made it back to UPLB, tired but satisfied with our adventure.
