Island-hopping in the Hundred Islands National Park

My mom’s a native of Pangasinan, but this is actually my first time to go westward in the province. I always wanted to go to Hundred Islands ever since it was introduced to us in our third-grade Sibika at Kultura textbooks. Then a colleague invited me and a few friends over to her place in Alaminos. Of course I said yes — better late than never!

We left in the evening of Holy Tuesday, finally arriving in Alaminos five hours later. Travel was rather fast, considering that it was Holy Week — thank you, SCTEX and TPLEX! We slept the wee hours of the morning away until we left for the city plaza of Alaminos, where we had early lunch. We spent some time taking pictures of lovely old houses.

Then we headed to Lucap Wharf, the jump-off point to the Hundred Islands National Park. We spent P1,800 for a service boat and P1,000 for life vests and aqua shoes rental for eight people.

The first island we went to was Governor’s Island, where there was a view to the expanse of the hundred (124, actually) islands.

“How many islands to go?” I asked, to which someone replied, “99 pa.” Actually, we were able to go to only five islands, not counting the islands we just saw from a distance but were pointed out to us by our boatman.

Next was Marcos Island. No pictures there, but we had to jump a few meters in a cave (Imelda Cave) to a pool below to swim back to our boat. It was quite an experience, and one of us may have dissolved to tears out of fear. :)

After this, we went to several other undeveloped islands. There was an island where we had to swim above a coral garden and gigantic clams to get there.

Finally, we spent some time taking pictures in another undeveloped island where there were photogenic rocks to do some photoshoots in. :)

Hundred Islands is no El Nido, sure — Palawan might have set the island-hopping bar too high for this traveler — but, cliched as this sounds, I always love seeing white beaches and appreciating how many beautiful ones there are in my lovely country! And I also enjoyed being with my friends in this trip, which I shared with colleagues-friends who are mostly in a crossroad, so to speak, like me.