Spirit of Siargao

Itold myself a long time ago that if I were Bill Gates-rich, I would buy myself an island. A week ago I found that island but I am dirt poor. That island is Siargao.

This small island off the coast of Surigao del Norte has become a popular surfing site that all of its flights are filled with hardcore surfers and beach goers. Its main tourist site, General Luna, is a narrow street teeming with pedicabs, motorbikes, scooters, or bicycles so no one chokes in traffic and vehicular smoke (or not yet). The surfers (usually foreigners) load up their boards in these two-wheeled vehicles that a line of them at dawn look like single-winged insects running towards the sunrise.

Seafood is at its prime in the island. Lobsters, prawns, shrimps, crabs and even the elusive shrimp mantis can be have had at its restaurants. Yet fruits and vegetables are expensive---like lanzones sold at 70 pesos per kilo or lemoncito at 5 pesos a piece when it is only 40 pesos per kilo and one peso a piece in Davao City. There are no malls (I hope never) and only small, one-storey family-run stores that sell basic commodities and a long gondolas filled with imported spirits.

Siargao’s spirit is languid which I owe to the rhythm of the sea but its horizon is richly lined with coconut trees and mangroves. Green and blue meet gracefully at the coast of this island.

The mangroves that line the coast of Siargao is at its preeminence in the municipality of Del Carmen. With 6,000 hectares of contiguous mangroves, it is said to be the largest in the Philippines. Part of the tour package offered to tourists is going around the mangroves and unlike other mangrove areas in some areas, its roots during low tide are free of flotsam and jetsam denoting that communities nearby do not through their garbage out into the sea. The mangroves are so thick that, at some point, slowly navigating in between the green spots can be exhilarating because it feels like one is gliding through treetops.

It would take 48 more lifetimes before I can become Bill Gates-rich to buy an island for myself and my family. Yet, there’s Siargao that is only an hour of flight away and for now, I am happy with that.

Siargao’s spirit is languid which I owe to the rhythm of the sea but its horizon is richly lined with coconut trees and mangroves. DAPHNE PADILLA