Anawangin Cove: Best Place in Zambales

Quest For Anawangin Cove 
by Army Alcayaga-Granada

Published in Manila Bulletin May 24,2012 

Manila, Philippines. Like anybody whose mind and soul have been crushed by daily grind, I long for space and respite from the steel and granite setting of Makati.
The quest for the fabled Anawangin Cove started with a hot cup of MacDonald’s brewed coffee and pancake with syrup. My companions and I left the city behind us and traversed the hilly Zambales region until we reached the town of San Antonio where the SUV snaked its way to a quaint fishing village called Pundaquit.

 We found ourselves in Pundaquit Paradise, a restaurant that serves sinigang na maya-maya (fish in tamarind broth). There was a sprinkling of European tourists relaxing and taking swigs of San Miguel beer. An unfamiliar Scandinavian tune drifted in the air.

We bought food from the local sari-sari store since food was pricey in the cove.  The locals were a tad curious but friendly. Children escorted us down the docks and fooled around on the sand. The boat danced on the sparkling waters, so cool and so blue, a luxury so unexpected, I allowed myself a sigh. The expert bangkeros put the banca in full throttle.

 I saw a school of fish weaving patterns in the sun. It was fun trying to catch them with my hands. After 15 minutes of relaxed sailing, we spotted strips of beaches where sun worshippers lolled with nary a care in the world. We rounded a bend and amidst oohs and aahs, the cove appeared.

At once, the pine grove beyond the sands greeted us and we were transported to a temperate place. Balmy weather, unruffled sea, the sand khaki white and soft to the toes, how remarkable to know we were just a few hours away from home! But forget home. For now, we were adventurers. We set up tent and gathered dry wood for the fire.

At the back of the pine trees is a stream that leads to the sea. We crossed the swamp up to a point where fresh water met brackish water. I was excited and a bit uneasy but it was exhilarating.

 In the middle of the water we took a break, and upon turning around and looking at the horizon, the glorious landscape that lay before us took our breath away. Pine trees surrounded the mountains and we imagined ourselves crossing the Alps.

There’s a saying that no two sunsets are ever the same. A perfect sunset capped the day for me. At dusk, most swimmers turned to their camps and left me alone on the beach. Some, though, were still in the dark waters a few yards away and all I could hear were their voices echoing in the silver and black skies while the waves whispered at me. Pam Munoz Ryan once said,  “Wander into that infinite space between soul and star...”

 I lay on the sand and watched the stars light up one by one.

The Fort

I remember more than ten years ago, there were no buildings in the Fort Bonifacio area except Jollibee, Starbucks, The NBC Tent ,  Pier One,Gloria Jeans. 

The open lots served as picnic grounds , and we used to park there to relish the great space that we know pretty soon will be just a memory.

People used to walk dogs, paraglide, fly model airplanes and kites. There was no facebook,twitter and other social networks.

Now. It is a bustling "city" a community of highrise buildings with commercial spots like Market, Market, Serendra Condominium, High Street ( where you can find bars, boutiques, bookstores, etc.),the Fort Square, and the Fort Strip.

Buildings obstruct the horizon. The streets are busy with people shopping or just bar hopping at night. Half or most people now stay indoors to twit.
How to reach the original Fort strip?
You can still find it at the end of High Street where the fountains are.

Experiencing Jill's

The night was young so very young. I guess because I have not really been in the circuit for a long  time I made a mistake of going to the bar with friends too early. I now belong to the coffee drinking generation and it seems the two have a very different timeline. 

My friends were itching to dance but we made do with chika and pica-pica.During Fridays, 80's music rules.

I was transported back to the days when we can disco till the wee hours of the morning in several nightspots like Another World, Where Else in Intercon, Jungle Bar (Manila Hotel), Stargazer in Silahis, Valentino in Ramada, 

Altitude 49 in the then Manila Gardens now Hotel Dusit, Circuit, Circus Circus in Manila Manor.

The Fort at Night

Facade of Jill's

Beer and sisig

Penne with pesto sauce

enjoying the beer

dancing with friends

The Quest For Anawangin Cove | The Manila Bulletin Newspaper Online

Love the sand

Fresh water and white sand

Glorious beach at sunset

All I can hear were voices 

It's been two months since my last blog. I was able to have a weekend jaunt to Zambales, just a little north of Manila. The Anawangin Cove is a place that I think will soon have a niche in the so called travel spots of the PI.The Manila Bulletin published my travel article with a few astonishing photos.

Anawangin Cove spikes our zest for discovery. The elements are all there, orgasmic sunsets that can skyrocket your estrogen, quiet ripples to soothe your techstressed brain, affordable rates not even your Scrooge of a boss can pass up (just a tent or if you’re wild and brave on top of a picnic table).
  Gosh. I have not been in the circuit for 7 years. The last time I got published was a romance novel and a textbook. This is a first. Read my article here.
The Quest For Anawangin Cove | The Manila Bulletin Newspaper Online

And then there were more...( Book Dilemma)

I have a dilemma. I would soon be moving to a two bedroom condo unit that boasts economy of space, meaning most of the things that accumulated all my life has got to go.

As I peruse my room it seems that the thing that had built up most in twenty years are … my books. Everywhere I look books - in the shelves, on the table, on the bed, even crawling on the floor.

What will happen to the tons of books that are a part of me as my memories are?

There is no one book that touched my life. To say so would be telling a lie, for there were hundreds of them that kept me awake for so many a night. The second that my toddler eyes engaged with the words of Doctor Seuss, words like cat, hat, box, fox, I was hooked.

There were no sacred grounds for me. I read in my room, I read in the bathroom, I read on the sofa, I even read in the closet. My yaya kept her Tagalog classics in there next to the blankets, and discovering them was one of the best things that happened to my young life. I started with Mars Ravelo’s Darna and ended up with Vincent Benjamin Kuah’s Cecilia’s Lullaby.

I remember my old .school’s library. It was filled with musty odor, dank and mystifying. Rows and rows of books lined up like hoarded antiquity. As I walked down the narrow spaces between the shelves, the sunrays brought millions of tiny floating specks casually landing on the book covers. They were like fireflies in the afternoon.

Was I Nancy Drew, whipping up her magnifying glass to hunt for clues? Titles were like an array of cryptic messages, asking to be unearthed and brought to light.

A book is a puzzle, an enigma to be solved.

There were secrets untold and there were secrets that waited for me to unfold. In high school, spotting an Agatha Christie paperback would be enough to give me goosebumps. It was the utmost pleasure to outthink the author by getting ahead of the story. It was even utter bliss to be completely wrong! Hercule Poirot tickled me pink for the most horrendous self aggrandizement in the annals of mystery novels. He is horribly arrogant but dreadfully funny. His repartees with his partner Hastings will delight even hardcore Sherlock Holmes fans.

A book is a nanny, a teacher, and a mother.

It had opened its pages and welcomed me with open arms. There were times that reality seemed too bitter to swallow that I found solace in a corner with a book in my arms, safe in the knowledge that although the world may not be right, there was Atticus, Scout, Huck, Levin, Silas and all the other unforgettable imperfect characters who gave me strength and wisdom and restored my belief in humanity.

My favorite book “Sightings” by Susan Trott introduced me to Buster. Trott said of Buster, “the good hearted ones are always the strongest, the most courageous, the most intelligent, i.e. clear thinking, because they’re unfettered by ambition, greed, fear, and other crummy needs humans are heir to that drag us down and make us craven or base”.

This book took me to a place where reality and myth touched intimately. Imagine the crystalline sea and characters as insouciant and blithe as the weather.

A book holds its meaning until you are ready to realize its wisdom. It gives meaning when meanings do not exist. I found the meanings that I looked for in the pages of “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. At a time when I was surrounded by people who took drugs for amusement, who thought that freedom entitled them to drink alcohol and throw the nights away in bars and parties, I found eternal values in the chronicles of bygone strangers.

Now I have to choose. Which one should I let go? Is it the crusty “Silas Marner” who has held that darling girl and protected her with his life? Or is it this coffee stained copy of “Anna Karenina”?

Oh, my dear old quixotic friend, how I adore your misadventures! But off you go. Slowly and painfully, I select a title, touch its jacket and perhaps feel if it has a message for me, still.

The story that haunted me by its beauty is Henry James’ “Beast in the Jungle”. This is the story of a man who thought something terrible was about to happen to him, that the “beast” would spring upon him.  And so he waited, not knowing that the woman who waited with him, waited who “knows with what passion”, was the only escape from the nothingness that was about to happen to him. Then she died and left him all alone. He travelled around the world only to find out that the thing that mattered to him the most was to be beside that tiny slab of grass that was her tomb.

A book is a journey.

To have traversed the Mississippi River with Huck Finn was a rite of passage for me. In reading his books, you never really know when the laughter ends and the recognition of truth begins. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer are characters Filipinos would relate to. We find humor in everything, we grit our teeth during hard times, and we forgive like hell.

And so I pack my books in boxes, like children off to school, or to some other place in another country. I have this terrible ache in my guts.

This box goes to my son in Macau, this box to my niece, this box to a colleague, this one to a friend.

I have some books left, the ones I cannot let go.

I have learned through bouts with our weather the importance of knowing what to value and what to discard .The possibility that I would read them again or that one of my children will keeps me holding on. I read them once sometimes twice. But the pages turn rust and brown

Perhaps it is time to let go.

A book is a tree that grows in our minds.

It is rooted deeply, connecting us to all that we hold dear in life.

It is a comfort to know that wherever the books end up, they will not die but keep on growing.

Do you see that last page where it says “The End” ?

 Well, it doesn’t. And holding that thought, I smile.

Pinto means Door

Translated into English, pinto means "door". In my dreams , I see a french door which opens into a secret garden, mysterious and awe inspiring, a door that leads me to beauty that only God can handwrite. There's grapevine trailing along crisscrosing wood that let's you peek.

e.e. cummings said "somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience..."


A door is just that... it can mean an experience that has been waiting for you to open...

It speaks of opportunity, the door which may open just a tiny bit for a tiny fraction of a moment, maybe disguised thinly as a challenge, or as difficulty.

Someone close to me,my sister is going to a far place, where she sees this slim crack, a door that may be the one door that can lead to other chances. Because what is a chance but a choice you take for yourself past all fears, past all ifs and buts.

The challenge quickens the blood and makes one feel alive. 

The choice renders you captain of your soul. Because a door is just that, a challenge and a choice.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

A beautiful and meaningful New Year to All...

 I want to share these passages by T.S. Elliot:

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.


                                                -T.S.Eliot    " Four Quartets"


 A farewell to 2011. And a BIG welcome to 2012.Dreams are always there in my pockets. Always a chance to do something new...

Christmas with Edward Scissorhands

It is different now. Used be that when December comes the  cold air would remind us of the most anticipated day of he year.
Now it's been raining and the air is soggier than cool.
Some people would be agog,what with Christmas just around the corner. But me, I wait for Christmas because every year , I sleep at Christmas day. I make certain that we celebrate on the 24th. Christmas is a "relax day" for me. My children know that they each make  appointments and try to give me this day on my own.


What I do is I just eat the leftovers in the fridge, snuggle on my couch and turn the TV on. One of the staples is my favorite "Edward Scissorhands". It never fails to get me teary eyed when Kim and Edward have their tender moments. Another fave is that endearing " Love Actually". I do believe in Christmas.Ido! I do!


Christmas is and forever will be synonymous with my father. Once upon a time, my father introduced us to his own brand of Christmas. I remember waking up one day with a white Christmas tree in the living room, it was made of cotton!  He would make us put up stocking the day before Christmas. At night I would peep and try to catch Santa in action. But I never could catch him. One time my dad made a chimney made of japanese paper. It was awesome. As a child, that's something one could remember. Now as an adult, That's one I cherish. Every Christmas was an event for us because of my dad. 

Splendor in the Grass

Last Friday, for some reason, I copied a poem by William Wordsworth entitled Splendor in the Grass.
Saturday came without a hitch, lazily I watched old Frazier reruns. 


Then came the dawn of Sunday.
 I woke up thinking of angels and souls. Just recently I read Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. A poignant story of young people destined to be slaughtered for their body organs for other people who have debilitating diseases. These unfortunate young people happened to be clones.
The question that arose was, would clones have souls?
Mulling over this quandary, I told myself,
 "Souls like angel's wings should be earned."


I went downstairs, to get my first coffee of the day. I gave my mom some pandisal with cheese and a cup of coffee, and got some cabbage for my rabbit, Baby.
I called to her. But she didn't come to me. Quiet as all rabbits are, I was thinking maybe she just went upstairs or was just hiding under the sofa. My lazy feet dragged my slippers which made soft flapflaps on the tiled floor. It was a cool morning.


Then I saw her and I knew right away that something was awfully wrong. The way her body was splayed at her side. Her face so calm.She died quietly last night.
 It broke my heart.Maybe not my whole heart, but a tiny fracture of my heart has broken away, and I know I will never get it back again. I will miss her so.

What though the radiance

which was so bright

Be now forever taken from my sight

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor in the grass,

Of glory in the flower,

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind…

                  - Splendor in the Grass, William Wordsworth

Last Christmas

I gave you my heart

A Poem Revisited

If You Can’t Stand the Heat


You ghost of poets
Who put your heads into ovens
Sat in closed cars and garages
Or jumped off ledges into hard edges
I understand
I have had hell
Compressed inside my cranium
As tightly as cotton stoppered aspirin.
Yes I understand; but I do empathize
With a Robert Frost or Marianne Moore
Of the staying souls
And take people away from them-
Not that they were saints-only stayers
When you ride a tiger
It’s death to tire of the ride.
- Margaret Flanagan

This poem which is from The Writer is a favorite of mine. I have been looking for other poems by Margaret Flanagan.If you know any, please, tell me.