I.
The
road to Paris is fraught with 95 steps. This is the first truth I realized. The
Pablo Macaraig accommodation which we rented featured a climb towards the
cottages located beside a hill farm. The accommodation names its different
areas after cities of the world. Enter
the gate marking the entrance to the steps to experience Istanbul. Reach the
top and you are in Paris. Go to the farm beside it and you are in Jakarta. Go
back to the cottages named Petra, Pablo, and Marcela, and you will be in
London. Eat and have the choice between Riyadh and Bilbao. Yes. Islands, though
isolated, can also take us someplace else.
II.
What
you need to know is that there were ten zebrafish frolicking over the corals
not even five meters from the shore. With some seawater in my ears and a pair
of goggles, I watched them, flashes of fish gleaming and darting everywhere, happily
oblivious that I was there. Later, we saw what I took to be a wrasse, also
hovering over the corals. But she sensed us and hid inside the reef.
I
wanted to go to Isla Verde partly because of this. Verde Island Passage is
considered as the center of the center of marine biodiversity in the world, and
where news of the death of the Great Barrier Reef is devastating (although
thankfully there have been recent reports to the contrary), the idea of this marine
paradise very close to home is comforting. But of course, there are more
compelling reasons.
III.
For
instance, the sea. I’ve never been more than three months away from home, even
when I was teaching in Cebu. So when the boat finally sailed towards the deep
sea and the waves started coming, I was heartened as if I was greeting an old
friend. No matter that I’m not a good swimmer; the waves, this certain
wildness, is something I am well-acquainted with.
“Wag
kang papatalo sa alon, ha,” the boy, swimming with his friends not far away
from us, urges his toy. It is morning on a school-day and they are in the sea
instead, using washed-up logs as makeshift floaters. Later, when my friend
gives them the P50 she has found among the corals, they come back to thank us,
then plunge again to the sea. Yes, Jean-Baptiste Massieu. Gratitude, the memory
of the heart.
Perhaps
this is the same prayer on the lips of the man knee-deep in water, mumbling to
himself while preparing to spear fish. Or on the lipless thoughts of the
islanders, so still they might be paintings. Or on the loud afternoon mooing of
the agreeable cow in the farm next to our cottage. It is certainly in mine. For
Nanay Lily who introduced pakaskas to us (palm sugar candy made only in the
island), “para mapalayo”, to make the delicacy known to the world. For Ms
Jamie, ever gracious hostess monitoring our travel progress and trip accommodations
even when she couldn’t come personally. For Kuya Ricky, accommodating and kind,
borrowing the goggles for us and seeing to our needs. For kingfishers, a burst
of reassuring blue in a forest of green.
I
wanted to take more pictures, but my friend tells me there is no need. When we
leave islands, we must also leave something else.
IV.
Cold.
I had forgotten the cold. We leave at the same time we started traveling two
days earlier, in the early morning, when the island’s sudden temperature shifts
strike more clearly. The boat captain waits for us at the shed near the
sampalok tree, the butt of his cigarette flickering like the dark blue sea
sparkling with its fireflies in the night. He must do this every day, ferrying
people here and back again, to an island where every arrival is anticipated and
every departure happens when most people are still dreaming in bed. The stars
fade into the darkness, the onshore gas plant looming castle-like in the
distance as we sail nearer to the mainland.
I
realize this trip is not about mountains and seeking their solitude. For though
I have always wanted to climb one, the sea beckoned more hauntingly to me. We
swam in the afternoons and in the early morning, a pattern we followed for two
days, as if at the beginning and end of every day, there is always the sea to
come home to.
V.
To
wake in another bed is to wander even in your dreaming. Two days near the sea and
then it’s back to the old bed in a house near the river. And it’s not the same,
not nearly the same, for though this river also holds currents dangerous during
floods, it’s the sea that’s closer to home. It’s the blue you’re yearning for,
a view you used to wake up to every morning and see before you sleep at night. Comforting
yet restless, like wind blowing even through the heart.
Always
this heaviness in unpacking, as if there was something lost, left behind in
wherever it was we went to: a moment, a day in a lifetime, to greet the new
ones ahead. Unpack to make the load lighter. To see what you have brought
back.
NOTE: The Pablo Macaraig
accommodation offers generator-powered electricity from 6 to 10 p.m. every
night. Beyond that, you have to pay P100 per hour. If you are looking for an
activity-filled holiday like the resorts around the island surely provide, this
is not yet the place for you. But if you are looking for a slice of island home
and a simple, off-the-grid life, by all means come. Here is a hush you want to revel
in.
