Boracay

I got so mellowed out by my trip last week to lounge on the beach in Boracay that I've been challenged to get back to this. But now it's Easter Week, which means that Manila is a ghost town - Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are the most "Everything's Closed" holidays of the year, locals tell me even more so than Christmas and New Year's Day. So I have nothing else to do ... in procrastination I've already even cleaned the lint out of the Pearl on my BlackBerry!

Last Wednesday I taught the 9am class and then was home to pack for a 1:00 pickup to head to the airport. Packing for the beach is fun - bathing suits are so smushable you can get lots into a little suitcase like my wonderful spinning, thus-far-indestructible (after 1.5 years of steady abuse) Brookstone Dash. Traveling with my fashionabulous friends Maureen and Nina, I was pleased how nicely my new silver K.I.L.U.S. bucket bag made from inside-out recycled drink containers coordinated with the gunmetal color of the Dash ... a nice bonus, considering that I chose the bag to match my increasingly argentiferous hair.

The flight to Caticlan Airport at the northwest tip of Panay island, just across the water from Boracay, was scheduled for 4:30pm and we got to the airport at 2:30pm. The nice agent at the Cebu Pacific ticket counter was able to put us on the 3:30pm flight - which meant that, thanks to Philippine time, we actually departed at our original departure time! Who knows when the 4:30 flight ended up leaving but the 3:30pm left at 4:30pm. (The whole airport had to be shut down for a while in the afternoon so President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's plane could land.) A pickup had been arranged by the Fairways Bluewater Resort where we were staying so when we got to the resort we were conveniently shuttled in a van from the airport to the beach where we got on the resort's motor bangka (a roughly 50-foot outrigger canoe not unlike the one pictured here), rode 5 or 10 minutes across a channel between Panay and Boracay Islands, and then caught another shuttle to the resort.

Boracay is famous for its 3-plus-kilometer long, wide, perfect white-sand beach that runs along the south coast of the island. The sand is powdery white. It must be made of pulverized, bleached coral. Despite the fact that the temps were in the '90s Fahrenheit/mid-30's Celsius, the sand never burned my feet. This is amazing to me because when the temp gets up into the '80s F/30-ish C on my home beach in Cape Cod, the quartz-based sand gets scorchingly hot and burns the soles of bare feet. Maybe the difference is because the quartz sand grains on the Cape are transparent and suck up the sun's heat like little greenhouses, and the Boracay coral grains are white and reflect the heat. Whatever the reason, it's lovely. And the water, aquamarine blue and gradually deepening so you can wade out probably 50 meters before the water's over your head, is positively WARM - like in the '80s F/30 C. During the evening, the water is noticeably warmer than the air. It's just barely cool enough to be refreshing, but refreshing it definitely is. Now I am a hardcore Cape Cod swimmer. Not quite Polar Bear Club material, but on the hottest day of August, the water never gets much warmer than maybe 72 F / 22 C there. I'll swim for an hour in temps like that, and I've even swum in the ocean there in April and in December (granted both of those times was just throwing myself in to probably 55 F / 13 C water, swimming a few strokes to say I did it, and running out to take a looooong, hot shower). These '80s water temps are something I could get used to though. Heavenly.

Along the main long beach are scores of restaurants, shops, places where you can get a massage, bars, resorts, vendors hawking sunglasses and snacks, SCUBA diving outfits (Boracay is also famous for its exquisite dive sites), etc.. The Fairways Bluewater Resort, however, is northwest of the main beach, on a huge chunk of land, probably occupying 10%of the acreage of the entire island including a nice stretch of beach on the north side. For golfers it's a sweet spot (Mom and Dad, you might be interested in this course, unlike the bland, flat courses you see in places like Florida and southern California, this course looks hilly and convoluted like the Woods Hole Golf Club).

We were staying in the gorgeous three-bedroom timeshare of one member of our big group, most of whom are Fulbright Scholars who are on fellowships in Manila and one of whom happens to be Maureen's cousin. A pretty cool group of people and for the awesome amount of brainpower they brought with them they were impressively fun and laid-back - yes, there's nothing like a tropical paradise to help even the biggest eggheads wind down! (Just kidding, they'd be a witty, fun, and hip group in any setting.)

The trip was three evenings of delicious beachside dinners and and two days of lazing on the beach sipping margaritas and daiquiris, with a little beach yoga and high diving thrown in. The first night, Maureen, Nina, and I had Mexican food and mango margaritas at Manana restaurant. The next day was devoted to beach-lounging and beach yoga. In the middle of the day we found a semi-shaded spot beneath some palm trees and went through the Bikram series together, during which Maureen and Nina got to learn that "warm yoga", while still feeling wonderful, isn't nearly the amazing workout as a real hot Bikram class. No one believes this until they try it - it took me the experience of taking class in a studio where the heater was on the fritz to fully appreciate the heat myself. We had lunch at Paraiso Grill, a restaurant owned by Georgie, a Bikram Yoga Manila student. Paraiso Grill has fresh-caught seafood on display, you select the fish you want and they take it away and cook it for you. I was told independently by four people that I had to try the grilled lobster tail with garlic butter, so of course I had that and it was phenomenal. At lunch I realized that I'd forgotten to put sunscreen on my face - while my tropical lobster was bluish-black in color, alas my face was on its way to the classic New England lobster-red. Whoops. I slathered on some SPF 36 and fortunately, a week later, it seems that I avoided getting a really deep sunburn on my face.

That first day I was wearing a bathing suit with a bizarre configuration - a one-piece with a criss-cross configuration that made it more like a bikini. According to Murphy's Law (which is one of the few constants in my life), that means goofy tan lines ... as you can see from the picture of me and Nina on Beach Day 2, I got some nice criss-cross stripes across my stomach from the geometrically interesting suit choice I made on Beach Day 1. In the left background of the picture of me and Nina is Willy's Rock, a coral outcropping that stands about 15 feet out of the water. I was swimming near it when I saw a couple of kids jump off of it - so of course I jumped off of it too. The coral was wicked sharp climbing up there, but there was a good, deep pool under the tallest part of the rock so it was a safe jumping place. Maureen and Nina were horrified when they learned that I'd jumped off the rock, so I'm glad I didn't have the chance to tell them in advance that I was going to do it - they might have talked me out of it!

In one other aborted adventure, I saw a sign at one of the dive shops advertising kitesurfing, so on the morning of Beach Day 2 I decided to go for a lesson - an introductory lesson was about $75. Alas, when I got to the north, windward side of the island where the kitesurfing was happening, it turned out that the introductory lesson consisted of standing in waist-deep water flying a miniature kitesurfing kite for an hour and a half. Not, I decided, the way I wanted to spend almost as much money as my plane ticket to the island and my last morning on the beach, but I did get to see some people kitesurfing around and it looks insanely fun. I'll have to investigate this kitesurfing thing in some more detail.

We pigged out like crazy for our Thursday and Friday night dinners! Both dinners were free as we were doing reviews of the restaurants - Aria and Zuzuni, two of the finest restaurants on Boracay - for Maureen's employer Philippine Tatler. I'm paying for it now, but it was worth the calories - we feasted.

Our few days in Boracay were just at the very beginning of the Holy Week crush - as I write this, the island is probably wall-to-wall people, more like Daytona Beach at spring break than the mellow but amenity-rich beach we experienced. The Saturday we left was the first of the two-day Women's Health Philippines magazine launch, and my last activity before leaving for the airport was to participate in a Vinyasa yoga class on the beach as part of the magazine launch festivities. It was a terrific way to round out the weekend - a little exercise pick-me-up after all that rich food and before the plane ride home.

There you have it - an awesome few days out of the congested, polluted, but exciting Manila - a tropical paradise escape. Next time, however, I'd like to find a virtually secluded beach, but still with perfect cool white sand, margaritas, and daiquiris! Given the vast number of Philippine islands and the beauty of the coastlines here, I know they're out there. It'll be lots of fun finding them!

Warmly,
Carol