Baluti Island (Real, Quezon)

[Mar 21 '08] This is the first time I'm buying my own fish, fresh from a public market in Ungos. There are no restaurants in Baluti Island so if we want lunch there, we have to do some cooking. I don't know how to pick good fish... seriously they all look the same to me! For a moment I thought things like "red tide", "is this fish rotten?", and "where is the nearest hospital?". It's so stressful, but I don't want to end up traveling 100+ kilometers just to eat canned Ma Ling or Corned Beef.

I ended up with -- yellowfin tuna. I asked the seller to prepare it so that all we have to do later is just put it on fire and eat it. She did some Mortal Kombat with the fish before handing it over to us... it was the bloodiest man-fish action I have ever seen live.

Rice is another whole new cooking problem so we didn't bother to try anymore. The fish is just too much for us. We got some soy sauce, tomatoes, calamansi ... At this point I don't know how we'll slice them without knives.

(OK, enough of the food, back to the trip..)

We took a short tricycle ride from the market to the port area. After that is a 10 minute boat ride to Aranda Beach Resort.

Upon reaching the island we rented a small hut where we could sit and have some shade. Locals here find it quite comfortable to talk to tourists, they even sat with us at the hut. From here we have a nice view of the magnificent Sierra Madre mountain range (the country's largest).

For the food... uhm, we found a sari-sari store there and they offered to cook the food for us. They don't grill fish but they fry it and we took the offer anyway to save us all the upcoming cooking trouble. Luckily we also found out that they had extra cooked rice at that time.

While waiting for our food we also had the opportunity to meet Dr. Aranda (the resort owner). He's been spending a lot of time developing the area, and it's so far so good. There are huts and places to sleep, the sand is mostly free from debris, they have a sari-sari store, water supply is ok. Job well done! Hope to see more major improvements in my next visit!

We had our lunch and went back to Merly's (restaurant which also happens to be my basecamp in northern Quezon) in Barangay Tignoan to prepare for our visit to the nearby falls.

[about 3 hours later we came back from Balagbag Falls]

Back at Merly's we had yet another delicious serving of her cuisine. Everytime she cooks, the food beats my expectations and I have ever since been excited about what she will prepare for the next meal. It's not like Gerry's or Dencios but compared to provincial food standards in Quezon this is already very good.

We took the seats at the rear end of Merly's and got a rare wonderful surprise.

I wonder if the patrons ever knew how nice this spot was. Table beside the river (which is by the way a flat piece of land during daytime) plus excellent food and a beautiful moonlit backdrop give us the perfect ending for our short roadtrip.

Last snap...