My goal for yesterday was to track down a place called Sapao. There is a nice picture of this place on the tourist brochure, and a number of people had asked if I’d been there yet. It seemed everyone expected me to go there. The brochure had this to say about it: “This is reputed to be an exrucionists haven on account of its delighting ribbons of gleaming beaches.” A bit mysterious and worth checking out.

I hadn’t been able to track down any kind of a map of this area, so I asked various people where Sapao might be. I was told that it was only 3 kilometers away and I could get there by heading out of Guiuan on the main road back to Mercedes and then turning right. I was certain there were no signposts or anything like that, so I figured I’d just have to keep asking along the way.

I turned right on one of the first streets and after asking, a couple of people confirmed that I was on the right track to Sapao. There was some confusion, though, and I figured out eventually that this was because Sapao was not really the name of the place I was looking for. Sapao was the name of a barangay and people were confirming that I was heading in the right direction to reach this barangay. The beauty spot I was looking for was the Sunrise Beach Resort. This, too, was confusing because the word “resort” is used differently in the Philippines. I think of a resort as an expensive hotel usually on the beach. But here, a resort may or may not have accommodation. They are more like picnic grounds and simply offer a nice stretch of beach with large picnic tables underneath shelters. To add to the confusion, these shelters are called “cottages”. These “resorts” are used by large groups of Filipinos for picnics by the beach. They show up on overloaded loaded trucks or jeepneys or motorcycles with lots of food and sometimes stereo systems. As a group, they rent one of these “cottages” for 300 to 500 pesos and spend the day eating and drinking and singing with occasional forays into the water.

This leads to a lot of confusion because even though I don’t see myself as staying at a resort (too expensive), I do picture myself having a cold beer or a hot cup of coffee. And when I hear that they have “cottages”, I do start to think about staying for the night. Unfortunately, neither cold beer nor accommodation exists at these “resorts”.

To go back to the beginning, I eventually found myself in the barangay of Sapao and I figured out what all the confusion was about. Then I was told that the road I was on led to another place on my tourist brochure: Dumpao Beach Resort. I decided to check this place out first and I found it quickly.

Dumpao (despite its unfortunate name) was a very nice place. It was not a resort in any sense and had nothing to offer in the way of food, drink, and accommodation. However, it offered a beautiful setting. There was a sign at the gate saying that the entrance fee was 3 pesos per “head”. Having only one head, I dug out 3 pesos, but I could find no one to give the money to. I simply rolled my bike to the beach and took in the view. The beach was wide and very long and huge waves were rolling in and crashing far offshore. It was low tide and there was no possibility of swimming. The only place where the water was deep enough looked to be the area right at the place where the waves formed, and no one in their right mind would risk swimming out there. At high tide, I think some swimming would be possible, but it would be more in the way of wading than swimming. Still, the setting was spectacular and I settled down on the sand for a while just to enjoy the spectacle of the long barrel rolls of the waves.

Sapao Sunrise Beach Resort was supposed to be further down the road, but I reasoned that I could probably get there easier by simply rolling my bike along the beach. The sand was fairly hard packed and I moved my bike along easily. Dumpao turned out to be much larger than I expected. It stretched along the coast for quite a ways.

In the distance, I saw a couple of limestone rock formations just offshore, and I reasoned that that had to be Sapao. The tourist brochure picture of Sapao showed rock formations like those.

I reached Sapao soon enough (after having to manoeuvre my bike underneath or over the many ropes running out to bangkas along the shore. Sapao was a picnic site just like Dumpao but much smaller. I could see a dozen or so men far out in the water. Some seemed to be looking for crabs or clams. Others were right beside the surf line and fishing with fishing line. I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I decided to see if I could walk out into the water to the surf line as well. The men I saw fishing with a fishing line were standing in water that barely came past their ankles. And that was despite being about a kilometer out.

I locked my bike to a convenient palm tree and then waded out into the water with my camera in my hand. Walking through the shallow water wasn’t easy as silty mud tried to suck the sandals right off my feet. At other times, I was carefully stepping along sharp stones. There was a great deal to check out along the way as this whole area was essentially one vast tidal pool.

It took a long time, but I eventually made it to the waves without mishap. I was a bit nervous being so far away from the shore. I imagined the tide suddenly moving in and cutting me off. At the worst, I’d be swept out to sea and drowned. At the very least, I’d have to swim to shore and all my camera gear would be ruined. Still, I figured that if there was any real danger, one or all of the nearby fishermen would have started yelling at me. Yet, I was nervous. I had gone quite a bit past even the last of the fishermen and I was standing perilously close to where the waves crashed down. It was a strange feeling to be so far out into the ocean and having big waves form right there in front of you. I think of waves as forming at the shore, not far out in the ocean like that.

I turns out that I was right to be on my guard. I essentially made the same mistake that I made while checking out the waves on Calicoan Island. I started taking pictures and then I started taking video. I panned my camera along the entire length of the waves and then I got involved in filming a bunch of waves that were arriving close together. I noticed a large ripple of water moving toward me from the large waves. This ripple hit my ankles. Then another ripple hit and then another. The water suddenly started to rise and when I took my eye away from the viewfinder, I saw a substantial mass of water racing toward me across the flats. Apparently, all those waves had combined to produce something of a mini-tsunami and it was heading my way. I started to back away frantically, but there was no way to escape it. It was moving far faster than I could ever hope to move out there. The water hit and nearly swept me off my feet. I just managed to stay upright and luckily, the water never got much higher than mid-thigh. The frightening thing was how much area this water covered. It wasn’t just a wave that hit me. It was like the entire ocean was suddenly moving in and even though the leading edge only came up to mid-thigh, it kept coming and coming and coming. I had a panicked moment as I wondered when this rising water would stop or if it would stop. It had an unstoppable feeling to it, and I imagined this water moving past me steadily and then rising until I was overwhelmed. Perhaps this was the tide coming back in. Luckily, my fears did not materialize. This had just been a freak combination of waves and the water did not rise any higher and the force of it slowly went down. Then the water receded trying to pull my feet out from under me. I stood my ground, carefully keeping my camera and pannier bag high out of the water. I decided that I had pushed my luck long enough and I turned around and headed back to shore.

Of course, it was nothing like it and nowhere near as dramatic, but I kept thinking of that one short tsunami video I’ve seen on YouTube. I think it was on Thailand, and it shows one person just standing all by themselves out in the water. The water was barely up to their knees if that. But from the vantage point of the person taking the video, you can see a big wave coming in. You expect to see the person standing in the water turn around and try to run. But this person just stands there and the water overwhelms him and he disappears from view.

There is a certain trick to tsunamis – similar to the water that had hit me. We tend to think of waves as having a certain shape. They rise up and then crash down and flow around us, and that is it. But a tsunami isn’t like that. It is a wall of water. The leading edge might look like a wave, but it is just the front part of a vast area of water that is moving. The guy in the video might have been able to survive a wave hitting him and then receding. But this was a flood, not a wave, and it swept him away. The water that hit me was similar. It had a wave at the front, but it was really a wide flood of water sweeping in and as it flowed around me I had a moment of real panic as I wondered just when it would stop. If it would stop.

In the afternoon after my visit to Dumpao and Sapao, I headed out into Guiuan with my camera. I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired, but I always like to bring my camera with me just in case. I walked down to Hollywood Jetty to see if Jessa was at home. I had plans to leave Guiuan the next morning, and I wanted to say goodbye.

Jessa was taking a nap in his room when I arrived, but he got dressed and we sat down at the dining table like before. He sent someone off to get another bottle of Coke and some ice and some pastries from a local bakery. I probably should have brought something with me, but I wasn’t thinking in terms of that kind of a vist.

I enjoyed this visit very much because Jessa’s younger sister was there. Unfortunately, I forget her name. I’ll call her Rachel for now. She is the one that worked for two years in Japan as a dancer. I learned that she also lived and worked in China. Plus, at some point she had met a man from Italy and they had gotten married. I knew she was going to Italy, but I didn’t know that she was going there to join her husband.

I remarked before that Rachel looked very pretty in the pictures I had seen of her. The pictures didn’t do her justice. She was very beautiful. She was also very intelligent and sensitive and aware. This combined with her excellent English and experiences overseas to make her a wonderful conversationalist. We had a lot of common ground and I could talk with her naturally and easily in a way that hasn’t been possible for months. I felt she understood what I was saying.

 

 

Tags: barangay, bike, Dumpao Beach Resort, Italy, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, South Coast of Samar, Sunrise Beach Resort