Chapter 4: Buco's, Aso's and Balut in Pagudpud

      

Pagudpud is at town in the Ilocos Norte province 12 hours north of Manila. It is nicknamed the "Boracay of the North." It's remote and mountainous, there are reefs, and the sand is not fine like Boracay so I'm not sure how it got that nickname...but I like it a lot. As you can see from the pictures it share similar geography to Hawaii. I read about a resort up in Padugpud called the Kapuluan Vista Resort. Check it out on the web. It has a Tahitian surfer vibe to it and although this was not the season for waves, i wanted to go check it out anyway.

By the way... Buco, Aso and Balut are Tagalog words. Buco is coconut, Aso is dog, and Balut is a fine Filipino delicacy. Google Balut if you dare!

We arrived at Terra Rika in Suad Beach around dinner time and got right to drinking. San Miguel Lights and this aweful cocktail drink called Sling were on the menu. It seemed like something you would find at a frat party. Just a bunch of cheap liquor mixed with Hawaiian Punch. We drank the whole pitcher anyway. Ma won't let us waste anything. The food was good as usual and there was a band playing. We turned in around 10:30pm for what we thought would be a good night's rest before heading to Blue Lagoon Beach and Kapuluan the following day. The Kapuluan Beach resort was booked because of a wedding so we planned to go for a day trip. What Anna and Ma didn't tell me was that when we got the room, they offered us an upgrade but warned us that it was a bit loud when the band was playing. This was very true and I was serenaded to sleep with Lady GaGa, Black Eyed peas and No Doubt cover songs until 2am. Awesome!

The next day we had breakfast and then spent the morning at the beach. I broke my back and got sunburned building a sand castle with a tunnel for Mason. No shovel.  Just as I finished and admired my prize, some little bratty Korean tourist kid came down the beach with a giant inflatable soccer ball and sat right next to us. Mason had no interest in the sand castle once he locked in on the ball. So I sulked for a while and gave the 5 year old Korean family stink eye for the next hour. I did get some satisfaction when I saw the Korean dad make a really shitty sand castle for his kids. It wasn't even close to as good as mine and he had a bucket. I guess he had a manicure or something and didn't want to ruin his pretty hands. But as karma would have it, just has I was beating my chest as the alpha male, my tunnel collapsed and my castle turned into a hole in the sand. I cried for a little and then started drinking San Miguel's to ease my sorrows. It was 10:30am so that was late enough.



We packed up the car and headed out on a 30 minute drive up over the next headland to Blue Lagoon and the Kapuluan. You come in from the east side (back side) of the mountains in the background of this picture so you don't really get to peak at anything until you drop down into the lagoon. It was a pretty pleasant and surprising view when we got there. Just beautiful beaches and well maintained farms.

  

this reminds me of Kauai

believe it or not there would be 2-3 foot sets that would roll through here

 

Anna pretty much fell in love with the resort right away. She wanted to get married again I think. We sat down and eat an awesome lunch. The place has a killer restaurant and grows all their veggies orangicly on the property. After lunch we just walked around and I probed the resort staff for information on the surf and other breaks in the area. Anna took 200 pictures. Mason played with his new friend Ziggy the puppy. Ziggy was teething and liked Mason a lot.




While dad surfed Mason nabbed some chick at the pool. He was a gentlemen in true form and followed the bros before h*s creed when he ditched the babe to showed dad the fresh water rinse-off buckets after the surf.

 



Mason scoring some older woman on the beach

the wave comes in and breaks right on a seaweed covered reef shelf. I can't wait to come back when it's in season with some size!



I found out from Anna that they rented boards there. A guy walked by with a longboard to go surf. I followed him out to gauge if it was only longboardable or if a shortboard would work out. It didn't take me long to go back and sort out a board. It was thick, dinged up and heavy but the closest thing to a fish and it worked out fine. It was just an Aussie guy named Troy, the Filipino longboarder named Mike and me. Turned out that Mike was the owner. He and his Filipino wife did a surf trip here several years ago and kept coming back. When the land went for sale they bought it and started the resort. Seems to be working out for them as the resort is full a lot. In the back of every surfer's mind is a fantasy about finding some cool surf spot not so well known and opening up a surf resort. I admired this guy's vision. He bought it when he was 25.

hollow and off-shore but just a little too small to grab a barrel

After the surf and a few more San Miguel's we packed up and headed back to Terra Rika. Tomorrow we would leave after breakfast and drive 10 hours back to Manila stopping in Vigan and San Fernando for meals to break the drive up. It sucked bad!