Pagbilao, Quezon

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Beach camping in Pagbilao

I had absolutely no plans that weekend, except to stay home and catch up on my reading of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I was looking forward to having for company Bilbo & Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Gandalf, Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, and of course (how can I forget), my precious Gollum. But I got this text message from Rene. There's this beach in Pagbilao in Quezon I might want to check out with them. I've never been to the place, so I said, "Hey! Why not?"

We had a brief stop at Joan's uncle in Lucena where we had breakfast. After shopping for our food provisions at the local market, we were on our way to Pagbilao. The weather was so hot. A short banca ride passing the power plant by the sea and there it was. It's a white-sand beach on a small cove and the water was clear.

With the harsh sun upon us, we camped on a shady area on the left side of the cove, and busied ourselves setting up camp and cooking lunch. We ate a hearty, all-charbroiled fare: "liempo" (pork), squid and eggplants; plus the clams which I managed to photograph before we bought it at the Lucena market. The sun was milder in the early afternoon which afforded us to venture out of our tents. There are colored fishes in the water to our delight.

For dinner, we had charbroiled yellow fin tuna . I took charge of cooking "pinakbet" for our vegies.

Accessible as it is, the beach is not for those who desire a lot of privacy. Rowdy crowds come and go even in the wee hours of the morning. The place is beautiful but it pains me to see people leaving their trash. On one end of the cove, we found this small cave that gets flooded with seawater on high tides. I was marvelling at the interesting textures on its walls until I saw what some vandals wrote on its walls. The "Leave No Trace" ethics definitely needs to be taught to more people.

If you don't mind, I'm going back to my book! (Don't forget to read first the trilogy's prelude, The Hobbit, if you want to get started on Tolkien hehehe.)

Info on photos

I took all photos using Nikon N80 and 28-80mm G lens. Film: Kodak Supra 100. Scanning was done at the lowest resolution possible for faster loading.

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