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island escape
Published in the January-March 2010 issue.
Melanie Ball retreats to the tranquil island of Marinduque and discovers the rural Philippines in slow time.
As our minibus slows to a stop behind half-a-dozen men and boys loading a red van with coconuts, it dawns on me just how odd travellers’ antics must sometimes seem to locals. Fresh from a waterfall swim, we clamber from the bus and lift our cameras, five damp paparazzi wearing an assortment of tropical attire.
The coconut crew laugh and clown as we snap them at their labours. The woman outside whose house we have stopped laughs, too, when our guide asks if we can photograph the Babe lookalike tethered in her yard.
Probably destined for a pot or spit – suckling pig is de rigueur at Filipino celebrations – the piglet is the cutest prospective food I’ve ever seen, a bright-pink bundle of pork that squeals hideously when picked up for one of us to pat. Chickens, ducks and an older pig react neither to the noise nor to the strangers in their yard.
Strangers are not new to Marinduque, the human-heart-shaped Philippine island that lies about 170 kilometres southeast of Manila. But with only ferry access for nearly four years before commercial flights resumed in December 2008, tourist numbers here have been lower than in other parts of the archipelago, and their impact smaller. And that is a large part of the island’s appeal.
Marinduque lacks international-brand hotels. It has no department stores or fast-food chains. And while most houses on Marinduque are wired for electricity, the supply is 24-hours. Instead of massed tourist traps and trimmings, Marinduque has town hotels and a handful of waterfront resorts that can arrange island tours, jet-ski outings, and boat trips to the Tres Reyes Islands. You might even convince a fisherman to take you to these ‘Three Kings’ on his outrigger.
With wrecks, underwater walls, reefs, coral and fish, Melchor, Gaspar and Balthazar islands are great diving and snorkelling sites (take your own equipment). Diving is a very young industry here, however, so it can be easier to dive from a live-aboard boat safari out of Puerto Galera, on neighbouring Mindoro Island.
Terrestrial wildlife puts on a must-see show at the WHS Butterfly Farm, in Barangay Pangi. This family affair breeds butterflies for release into the wild as part of local butterfly conservation and job-creation efforts. I look at butterflies in all stages of their life cycle – caterpillar, chrysalis, adult – before entering a steamy flight-house where exquisite black-and-white Idea Leuconoe (paper kite or rice paper) butterflies adorn the greenery.
The butterfly farm is on Marinduque’s bumpy, 120-kilometre ring road, which we share over two days with dogs, chickens, taxis, tricycles-for-hire (canopied motorbikes with side-cars) and crowded jeepneys. Marinduque is green: the rich greens of mountains dripping with rainforest; the peppermint greens of ocean shallows; the radar-screen greens of coconut palms, banana plants, cornstalks and rice fields, which farmers plough with water buffalo. But Marinduque’s major cultural event and tourist attraction is the Easter-time Moriones Festival. Dating back 200 years, this fiesta brings hundreds of Roman centurions (moriones) wearing extravagant home-made masks onto the streets for re-enactments of the tale of Longinus, the Roman soldier who, differing legends tell, pierced Christ’s side with his lance, regained his sight when Christ’s blood touched his eyes, proclaimed his faith and was executed for so doing – or lived to old age. Moriones also sometimes don their finery outside Holy Week: a phalanx of photo-friendly centurions met the gynaecological medical mission on my incoming flight.
A half-hour’s drive up the coast from the airport is the provincial capital, Boac, home to about 50,000 people, or a quarter of Marinduque’s population. Spend half an hour mid-afternoon in the town plaza, beside the rudimentary museum (terrific masks) and urban island life unfolds around you. Schoolchildren, wearing white shirts that look as pristine as they probably did when they set out that morning, ebb and flow across the pavement as they wend their way home. Jeepney-loads of people watch six boys playing jolens (marbles) in the dust beneath a tree.
Every Marinduque barangay has a community church. Boac has an 18th-century red-brick cathedral, a tranquil chamber with a gilt retablo (altarpiece) and a terrazzo floor, on which a local dog is reclining when we step through its fabulously carved front doors.
Beyond Boac, the ring road continues north, but inland, to Mogpog, before turning east, past the farm where travellers have been known to photograph a particularly pink piglet after swimming in Paadyao Falls. Farther on, you can turn off to Barangay Ipil, to explore an extensive cave system inhabited by bats and rock pythons. Keep going and the road turns south, running down the island’s mountainous east coast to White Beach, Marinduque’s longest and whitest beach, another place to don mask and snorkel.
From White Beach, you can see Mount Malandig, the dormant volcano that rears up to a magnificently ragged 1,157 metres on the island’s southern tip. If James Bond were to rendezvous with a femme fatale in the Philippines, Mount Malandig could be his landmark, for just offshore from this sleeping giant is a Bond-ish resort. A Santorini-inspired colony of white buildings on a rock thrust 114 metres out of the Sibuyan Sea, Bellarocca Island Resort & Spa, which opened in 2009, has a location any stylish secret agent would adore. The interiors suggest that the resort is unsure whether it is Filipino, Mediterranean or international, but the outdoor areas and infinity pool attached to each villa are pure Bond.
Kayaking around the island is popular. An alternative is the hike to Mount Malandig for an island-studded sea view. Enthusiastic promotional material claims that someone standing atop Malandig in the clearest weather can see the world’s most beautiful volcano, Mt Mayon. •
Photography by Melanie Ball.
TRAVEL FACTS
getting there
- Philippine Airlines flies direct from Melbourne to Manila with connections via Sydney. Phone 02 9279 2020 or 03 9600 2898 or visit www.philippineairlines.com
- Qantas also flies from Sydney and Melbourne to Manila. Phone 13 1313 or visit www.qantas.com.au
getting around
- Zest Airways flies Manila to Marinduque and Manila to Legazpi City. Visit www.zestair.com.ph
where to stay
- Bellarocca Island Resort & Spa is a luxury hotel off Marinduque’s southern coast. Accommodation ranges from deluxe hotel rooms to two-bedroom villas with private swimming pools. Phone +63 2 817 7290 or go to www.bellaroccaresorts.com
- Hotel Venezia is a mid-priced boutique hotel near Legazpi City airport. Phone +63 52 481 0877 or visit www.hotelvenezia.com.ph
- Misibis Bay Raintree, 30 minutes from Legazpi City, is a pampering, food-lovers’ island resort with lots of water sports. Phone +63 2 683 8222 or visit www.misibisbay-raintree.com
further information
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