I started 2016 with a craving for obliteration and in search for a riot. In a figurative manner yet tilting slightly into literal boundary. I was rebounding from yet another failed shot at a relationship. As I hear comforting words from friends who remained, murmurs of an old saying that slices through among kindred souls, rang loud and clear; “there’s nothing traveling cannot fix”. So there it goes - the road pointed me the way and I shuffled my feet, moved on and embraced the year with a newfound appetite for life.

Puerto Galera used to be a familiar place I associate with sublime white beaches almost devoid of structures – where me and my buddies from UST Mountaineering Club would pitch our tents over a stretch of fine sands with only a lone house standing in the middle. “A German owns that house” I remember a friend telling us. Our campsite then, situates on a beachhead that leads to the foot of Mount Malasimbo – where we would day trek before we retire back to our tents. For three to four days, our group and nobody else would exist in sheer delight on a place everyone calls as Talipanan beach – which those days back in the late 1990’s, was a picture of isolation. I would come back many years later only to see numerous new resorts erected all over rendering the place almost unrecognizable. Since then, I see Puerto Galera as that distant friend, who once possessed a benevolent silence meant for listening to one’s thoughts, while offering a haven for nature lovers – but has now grown into a wild child catering to a more party atmosphere.