Lobo Beach and Verde Island: The magnificent Batangas

“It’s easy to be happy. It’s just a matter of choice.”

19-20 May 2007: Here we go again in the province of Batangas, the most accessible and closest beach destination for us. About two hours in expressway and an hour of zigzag up-down-hill road, you’ll reach the 4^th class municipality in the province of Batangas, the town of Lobo; it is located in the southeastern part of the province which offers some beautiful site for diving. The town has only few resorts and they recommend diving as the major activity because the Verde Island passage has numerous diving spots and coral reefs are still intact.

Calm waters of Isla Verde Passage

After reaching the town, we just looked for an economical accommodation for an overnight escapade and by chance we got one easily. It has a simple room, secured compound, with front area for siesta and rocky beach front with barrier. Since we don’t have enough money and courage that time to try diving, we just decided to charter a local boatman to bring us to Isla Verde (Verde Island) to experience the stunning beach (as they said) it has. The island can be seen from the shoreline of Lobo and it seems like it was just a few kilometers away but the rough sail took us almost an hour to reach the shoreline.

It is mainly composed of crushed corals. The water is clear. The waves are amazing. After few hours of experiencing the spirit of the island, we decided to get back to the resort. Intentionally, our boat captain maneuvers his boat all over the island before going back to the resort. He let us see the entire scenery of the island. Its southern part was dominated with sharp rock formations created by waves of the open sea while the east and west side has lush greens.

According to our boatman, few families were living in the island and there is no electricity during night time. The generator that supplies electricity to the household operates only in daytime to sustain their daily living activities. On the other hand, we saw one site with on-going construction, maybe resort, or rest house. If that’ll be a resort, definitely lots of visitor will come to the island and see the beauty of it. I hope that I can stay overnight in the island on my next visit.

Back to the resort, even though the shoreline is not so comfortable to swim because of its rocky piece, we still managed to strike the heat of the sun in salty water of Lobo Beach. We really love sea water; we considered it as a vitamin to our soul.

We don’t mind how tanned we can get or how dark we would be after the swim. Because this water replenish our energy and it provide us the vigor to continue life despite of the problems that we have, it helps us to be thankful, and to think that it’s easy to become happy and choose to be happy.