“You’ve seen one white sand beach, you’ve seen them all,” I muttered half-jokingly when a few of my carpooled friends expressed excitement to finally get out of a five-hour car trip en route to Guiuan. Ours was a very procedural group. At 5 a.m., we left Ormoc, stop for a quick brunch at eight, go to a 7-Eleven in Palo to buy last-minute essentials for our beach and cave crawl, and endured another three hours in the car to reach Calicoan Island, southeast of the Guiuan municipality. Weeks of planning and preparation were put into this fateful day but you never really cross the bridge until you’re on the rickety planks clinging to the ledges for dear life. And clung we did. On top of almost forgetting our prized marinated pork belly, the mounds of rice that we brought in a rice cooker container decided to leap out and rest on the pickup truck bed while we were careening left and right on the way to Tacloban. Google Maps also rerouted our convoy and took us to a diversion to Palo, with the noble intention of saving us time only to arrive at a roadblock about six kilometers after the fact.

Tomboc, G. O. (2021, October 7). Calicoan dreaming. SunStar Cebu, p. 8.