Calaguas, Camarines Norte

June 26, 2012

Calaguas, Camarines Norte

Confession: I have gone to quite a lot of trips in the last few months, but I haven't been able to write about them because I have just been so busy lately doing terribly important stuff.

Okay, I’m lying. I haven’t been busy doing anything important. In fact, the past few days have been filled with Doctor Who and Sherlock marathons. I have just been feeling very, very, very, very lazy lately.

Don’t fret though. To make up for my dastardly deed (“dastardly deed”---I really have been watching too much British TV), this post about my latest trip will have more useful information than usual so that my dear readers, all two-and-a-half of them, will be able to at least use it as a guide.

So…I went to Calaguas, that untouched, undeveloped beach in far-away Camarines Norte you’ve probably already heard about.

Calaguas…

I’ll just say it outright: I have been to a lot of beaches in the Philippines, and Mahabang Buhangin (the beach in Calaguas that visitors flock to) have got to be one of the best in the country.

I judge beaches that I go to by three things: the sand, the water and the shoreline.

The beach’s white sand was very fine and powdery. One peculiar thing about it is that, like the sand in Boracay, it does not become hot even in the middle of the day.

The water was very clean/clear and was this very pretty shade of turquoise. And even though the water was not always flat and calm since we went there at the start of the Habagat Season (is that Southwest or Northeast Monsoon? Just google it yourself), the waves never got big enough for them to make swimming there any less enjoyable (actually, we had a lot of fun trying to “ride” the waves).

Mahabang Buhangin’s shoreline, apart from being quite long (more than one kilometer according to my very uneducated guesstimate), was unblemished by any rock, coral or sea grass. It’s only at the very tip of the beach’s right side where you can see rocks, and they’re not the sharp kind either. When you go there, you’ll enjoy one very long stretch of fine, white sand-beach.

To sum it all up, Calaguas is just like Boracay, but without the party crowd, the tacky parang-nasa-Raon-lang music and the occasional algae.

Here is the useful information I was talking about earlier:

Based on what I read, you can go to Calaguas either through the Daet-Vinzons route or the Paracale route. We took the Paracale route so that’s the only thing I can talk to you about.
There’s a Superlines bus that goes straight to Paracale, but there’s only one trip a day, which leaves at 7:45 PM. Since you can’t book your tickets in advance, you have to be at the bus station (which is along the South-bound side of EDSA) at around 7 PM to ensure that you’ll get seats. If you miss this bus, then you can take a bus to Daet then just take a van going to Paracale when you arrive at the station (but I don’t know what time the first trip going to Paracale is).
Bus fare is Php515 if you want to take the airconditioned bus, and because this is a 7-hour trip, you’ll WANT to take the airconditioned bus.
The bus going to Paracale stops near this small inn/restaurant called Malayan where you can have your breakfast and, for 20 pesos, wash up if you wish. It has the perkiest, most loud-mouthed manager (?) ever. She was fun. Haha.
Our boatman was Kuya Nelson (+639203179315), well actually, he just owned the boat and two other guys drove/steered/I don’t know it. He charged Php3,500 for a boat good for 7 people, roundtrip. As a discount, he paid for the fee being charged by the island’s caretaker (which was I think about Php25 per person).
For your food, you can buy supplies at the Paracale market before you head off to the island (obviously). When you get to the island, you can have the caretakers cook your food for you. They don’t have any fixed rate, how much you’ll give them for this kind gesture depends on your generosity.
You can buy cold drinks and ice from the caretaker. I have no idea where they get the ice though since there’s no electricity there.
Unless you plan on sleeping under the stars or in one of the very few open cottages on the beach, you need to bring your own tent. I got mine for Php800 at Ace Hardware.
The Superlines bus going back to Manila from Paracale leaves at 7PM. If you want, you can also take a van to Daet (a 40-minute ride) and then just catch a bus from there. There’s a bus that leaves every hour.
If looking at the pictures below has made you want to catch the very next bus going to Paracale, then don't---unless of course it's already March---because locals say that waves in the area could become very big during the Habagat season and might make it hard for small boats to travel safely from Paracale to Calaguas and vice versa. A local told me that some hard-headed tourists who insisted on going to the island during this time got stranded in Calaguas for a week. So unless you're planning on taking a long vacation, just wait for summer, okay?