Zambles! You are so Beautiful…

May 17-18, 2010 SDA Team Building

I’m so excited with this Team Building activity because I was the one who suggested the place and made the itinerary. Hooray! I did the entire job for this activity.

May 16, 2010 I was informed that there will be some changes made for our itinerary and it made me sad, so what my fiancé and I did was to call everyone involved in the activity and made some transactions with my contacts for our adventure. I am proud to say that my fiancé and I made it to well to follow our itinerary. Woohoo.. It was a tough one but we made it possible, thanks Alvin for the help.

Day 1 – May 17, 2010

As early as 5:30 am, our ETD started. We met at the SDA building to wait for our bus. We were delayed for some reasons and we just depart for around 6:30 am here in Manila. At around 11:00 am, we arrived at San Antonio to meet kuya Jeff, he is our guide in our whole stay at Zambales. Kuya Jeff is a very kind man to negotiate with; he has a lot of considerations with our stay. Since it is almost lunch time when we arrived we decided to have lunch at San Antonio wet market, we also bought some food that we will need for our stay. We paid kuya Jeff for the boat that will transport all our staff in Anawangin for P40.00 per head.

Our adventure begun at around 12:00nn – the start of our trekking, we had 2 guides for this extreme adventure, we are 23 in the group and we had to pay P80.00 each for our guide. In the Philippines, we experienced El Niño at March until June; I may say that month of May will be the height of El Niño phenomenon. It was really a hot hot sunny noon. Imagine how hot it could be at 12:00noon and it was at the height of El Niño. OMG, it was my first time to do trekking and I never imagine how high the Mt. Pundaquit was.

When were walking towards the mountain, it was very very hot. Since we were still at the flat surface we had a lot of joking time and still walking with smiles.

The trek has just begun going to Mt. Pundaquit

While we are going up the mountain I really felt so tired because of the temperature I’m feeling, I felt suffocated with what I’m wearing that time and I can’t breathe. Even if I felt so uncomfortable and tired, I was determined to finish the trail. Along the way on the top of the mountain our water supply was almost out just for an hour of walking.

The trail (if you noticed trees are not too many, dried Mt. Pundaquit)

We were so drained, no water and no energy to walk in the hot sunny afternoon trek but still we made it to the top of the summit. It was a great experience to see what was the nature offering to us. I was so amazed to see the cove of Anawangin Island from the top of Mt. Pundaquit. That time when we reached the summit I was so proud of myself that I did it! I made it! I never quit!

The Summit of Mt. Pundaquit______________________ The Cove of Anawangin

On our way down the hill, it was not just easy. The hill was so rocky at the same time sandy, it was hard to go down it might slide you down the hill dead when you’ve reached the flat area. My fiancé always make me safe, he made sure that I was stepping my feet right on the rock, of course with some coaching of Kuya Aldrin and Ate Sha who are pro in climbing.

down the Hill (dried place, supposed to have water)

After 5 hours of walking up and down at Mt. Pundaquit we then had our rest at Anawangin Island.

Anawangin Island is a white sand virgin beach. It offers a lot of beautiful scenery if you explore around it. The island doesn’t have electricity and don’t have hotel to stay in, it only has emergency light coming from the nearby sari-sari store, also comfort room is just okay, it has deep well pump. You can sleep in a tent that can be rented with your tour guide for P200.00 good for 4 pax. We also paid for the overnight stay at Anawangin for P100.00 each.

At this virgin island, we had a lot of fun; we swam in the blue water and even play games under the moon and the stars. We also cooked our rice here in this island and we eat different viand the “san marino corned tuna”, every one of us had this in can tuna, it so funny to share it with each other.

After dinner, we decided to drink some and had happy times with what we so called “kulitan games” with some “aminan portion” and even had some movie portrayal with all my makukulit na officemates. That moment there were no dull moments, it was just pure fun and laughing moments because of our very own “Empoy Dee” and “King Kong Dantes”. I also saw 2 shooting stars at this place, it is a very beautiful place at night when you can star gaze with the one you love. Since we run out of drinks we decided to take rest and slept in our tent, some of us even slept in the bamboo chairs available in Anawagin.

Day 2 – May 18, 2010

6:00 am was our call time for our next adventure – the Island Hopping. 6:00-7:00am preparation for our breakfast, 7:00-8:00 am was our breakfast time.

After breakfast we decided to look around the beauty of Anawangin Island since we were still waiting for the boat we rented to arrive, we paid P300 each for the boat. We had some photo shoots at the lake side of the island where there are pine trees, it is a very beautiful place, if you can research for some photos of it you will think that the place is not in the Philippines because of its beauty.

Beach Front of Anawangin

After we explore the island, at around 9:00 am the boat arrived. We started our island hopping with other two islands. First stop is the Capones Island – the white rock! Here, we went up to the light house. It was an old light house and a bit hard to explore since there are some path ways that you have to really stretch some parts of your body just to get at the top; but when you get there you can see a very beautiful place, a sanctuary.

Capones Island

Next stop is the Camara Island where we had more time to swim, blue water and there are a lot of rock formation, you can imagine them with different faces. We had here more kulitans and photo shoots because of its beauty. I just haven’t got the chance to take a lot of photos; my DSLR’s battery was drained. Zambales is one on the great places I’ve been, the nature offers us beautiful things that we have to protect, to love and promote.

Camara Island

At around 1:00 pm we headed back to San Antonio at kuya Jeff’s place riding a boat. Here, we had to take shower and prepare our things going home. We paid kuya Jeff P20.00 each for the shower fee. I computed the total expenses we had each head, for about P740 only! The food was excluded and the transportation going to San Antonio in this computation since the transportation is free for us. Imagine just for as low as P800 you can indulge your self with this paradise island.

2:00, we are ready to go back home, since it was past lunch time we decided to eat at Subic area at around 3:00 pm, then we headed back to Manila for another 3 hours of travel time.

We arrived in Manila at around 6:00 pm and the happy and ideal budgeted journey just ended!

Here are some other photos in our Zambales trip, I took most of the photos posted. :) http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=174319&id=585499141

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/album.php?aid=174601&id=585499141