White Beach: Huge waves and angry weather

“There’s always sunshine after the rain.”

23-24 July 2006: Right after the Palawan adventure, we sue the waves of Typhoon Glenda (international code name Kaemi) at Puerto Galera. This adventure of mine with the Samaniego clan is one of the toughest, challenging, breath-taking and fulfilling experiences of my early years in discovering the beauty of the beaches in the Philippines.

Early morning of 23 July we already knew that the typhoon was heading southern part of Luzon, but bravely we decided to go and hit the pedal of our wheels. In Batangas port, since there was no warning from the Philippine coast guard not to sail from-and-to Puerto Galera we’re all unperturbed and eager to continue our long-awaited planned activity. Normal travel time of the ‘bangka’ (local term for customized boat, and normally has the capacity of 50-80 passengers) is 45 minutes, so, in our opinion it was just only 45 minutes of anxiety that we are going to endure during the entire sail. But, we are all wrong, roughly 2 hours of breath-taking sail before we reach the Sabang Beach, supposedly to White Beach but we re-routed because of huge waves. During that 2-hour sail, many of the kids were vomiting and vertigo was all over the boat, prayers were citing by everyone - asking for guidance and valor, some for forgiveness of their sins, some started to wear their life vest and tied it up anxiously, we stopped the laughing and also the chatting, I do captured some photos and videos of waves which was more or less 3-meter high, big enough to enter into our boat and push it from side to side.

Of course our captain was still relaxed and told us that it was just normal and his boat can tolerate those big waves and he said that he was experienced enough and knew how to maneuver the boat in the correct way to avoid it being hit by the waves in the wrong way. Since the way to Puerto Galera will pass-by some islands like the Mariccaban Island, Isla Verde, etc. then my idea that moment was to swim to the nearest island when the boat capsized.

The typhoon became stronger when we arrived at the Sabang Beach. It was lunch time already when we headed to white beach and had a profligate lunch of Filipino dishes. In the afternoon, we still managed to play along the shoreline with the big waves and take pleasure in buying locally made handicrafts and souvenirs.

The next day, we went snorkeling to the nearby lagoon. Unfortunately the view was not as good as expected because of the typhoon, we didn't found Nemo too. Corals were destructed maybe because of the typhoon or local fishermen. But we did enjoy swimming in the 20-ft deep sea.

After that sea activity our feet led us to Aninuan Falls. The long day had finished and we headed back to Batangas port by RORO (car carrying ferry), since there was an announcement made by the Philippine coast guard that prohibits the small boats to sail because of bad weather. My first time to sail in RORO and I enjoyed it a lot. I’m looking forward to experience sailing in a Class A++ sea voyager passenger ship, Titanic like? I hope so.

God always give us the reason to believe that we are not alone, He always assure each one of us, in His own way that everywhere you will go, no matter how tough the situation is, He is there to give you strength, for as long as you believe in Him. This trip really touched my heart and showed to me that love is everywhere. The big waves of the Typhoon Glenda made me realized that God has a better plan in everything.