Boracay

I haven't posted the details about our first trip to Boracay yet, and still, I'm already raving about our second trip to the place after almost a year-and-a-half after.

Due to the my current training in Makati, I've only been able to download our pics from my cam three days after we got back to Manila.

Here's a quick preview. I processed this ahead of the others in order to make it the icon for my Boracay 2009 trip in my Flickr account.

Finally, a Boracay sunset at Willy's rock.

I'll be posting the the rest of the pics hopefully soon.

The heart of the Philippines, Ilo-ilo

My fiancee and I got to visit Ilo-ilo again after four years... this time as tourists. Yup, no work-related and obstrusive destinations were part of the itinerary.

Ilo-ilo would serve as our jump-off point to our main destination -- Boracay. We'd have until the following morning to discover Ilo-ilo (or at least the vicinities near Jaro) upon the recommendations of our very hospitable hosts and friends, Rolly and Eden.

We were told by Eden that interesting churches abound near Jaro. She even wrote the name of churches that we should go to and how to get to those places. This, made our objective very clear -- visit as many churches as we can before night falls.

Miag-ao Church

We decided to visit the furthest church first. Our first stop after riding a jeepney for around two hours is the Miag-ao Church. It is one of the oldest churches in the entire archipelago and has a very colorful history.

As quoted in the previous link, "In baroque-romanesque style, the church sinks six (6) meters deep into the ground with walls one-and-a-half (1 1/2) meters thick and buttresses thrice thicker in size. A truly 'Philippine Church', it exudes a native touch. Its artistic facade is decorated witha relief sculpture of St. Christopher carrying the Christ child amidst coconut, papaya and guava shrubs. A large stone image of St. Thomas of Villanova, parish patron saint, dominates the center. Carved life-size statues of the Pope and St. Henry with their coat-of-arms above them flank the main entrance. Supporting the facade are the twin belfries, one towering two-storeys and the other three-storeys high."

Guimbal Church

The Guimbal Church was built in 1774 by Padre Campos. It is made of igang (adobe) and coral stones which were quarried from the nearby island of Guimaras.

At present, it has been restored to its original structure, after it was destroyed twice -- during the Second World War and during the 1948 earthquake.

By the way, Guimbal got its name from a drum measuring 30cm x 20cm (height x diameter). It is made from the hollowed-out trunk of a palm tree, and is covered either by goat or deer skin.

Tigbauan Church

Sadly, the Tigbauan Church was our final stop of the day (at least before the sun went down below the horizon), as we were yet a good hour or so from our hosts in Jaro.

We tried to ask one of the caretakers (I think he was a sacristan) if we could go inside and take a look at its interior, and hopefully take some pics. No go. The parish priest was holding a mass in a nearby cemetery and the caretaker said that there would be nobody to take us on a tour of the church's interior.

Upon, seeing that we were not able to get inside, we met a "colorful" man on a bike who kept asking us pretty annoying questions (like "Why were'nt you able to get inside?", "Why do you want to go inside?", and "Where are you from?"); he kept tailing us wherever we went around the plaza. Oh well, maybe that was the signal to get on the public transport again and head back. :)

After dinner at a local Andok's, we were joined by Rolly, Eden, and Rain (their bubbly daughter) and headed for Jaro Metropolitan Cathedral.

Jaro Metropolitan Cathedral
Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria

The cathedral is so magnificent even at night... and so is its belfry.

There is this story that Rolly and Eden were telling us as I was setting-up my camera for the shot above -- the image/statue of the Lady of Candles, the blue one in the midde, keeps growing. In fact, she used to be situated at the space below the middle crucifix. As the years went by, she steadily grew until she could no longer fit in the space. Thus, the new one in front was made for her.

The Belfry

After taking a few pics of the cathedral, we walked home. It was already quite late at night and there were almost no people in the streets anymore. I looked across the street and saw this structure --

It was said to be owned by one of the more prominent families in the Philippines.

Anyway... Rolly, Eden, Rain, and to the hospitable people of Ilo-ilo... maraming salamat! We will be back!

Puerto Galera, revisited.

Both figuratively and literally.

This is my attempt at a repost on our second visit to Puerto Galera last 2007. This time, I'm now sporting cleaner locks (as opposed to my pony-tailed hair a few years back). I now also have a digital camera in tow -- my Canon Powershot S2 IS. Yup, no more films.

If you have a choice in your schedule, don't go to Puerto Galera during the Holy Week... particularly the Holy Weekend. Divisoria would seem like a ghost town compared to the Pier of Batangas during the said holidays. If you really have no choice, go to the pier early. Very early. Early as in try to get on the very first trip.

If you're commuting, it would take around three hours to get from Cubao to the pier via bus. How soon you can get on a pump boat to take you to Puerto Galera depends on the number of people inside the pier's departure area. The atmosphere inside the departure area's like a free-for-all melee. But hey, melees are fun! Get those tickets quick and open your ears for departure insructions (read: don't miss the boat).

After thirty minutes or so of being gently tossed by waves, you get to arrive here -- famous White Beach.

White Beach

The sand is not white though, the color is more that of polvoron. Don't get your hopes up high too -- the sand's texture is far from those of polvorons. A word of caution, at high noon, the sand can get as hot as polvorons being toasted in a wok! The solution? Get in the water!

The water, however, is cool, clean, and crystal clear. This Oriental Mindoro municipality is really a destination to consider if you're looking for a quick getaway from the hustle and bustle of the city. Who knows, you might get to meet your yuppie officemate from Makati in this place? Only to learn that this is the place where he can "get out into the open."

Awwww, c'mon. Everybody knows it. You know it, and I know it. Puerto Galera is sort of the unofficial spot where fairies come to get out of their closets. Even my fiancee's cousin admits to this "phenom." Hey, as long as everybody's happy, right?

Alrighty then... back to the topic at hand. If you're one who likes to photography people and landscapes, you've come to one of the most beautiful places around. The people and faces are abundant. Remember all those people back at the Pier of Batangas? Yup, they're all here! The landscapes and rocks make for excellent compositions, and the sun sets ideally out to the sea.

The sun sets at Galera

As night breaks, the parties start and you'll find the beaches awash with teenagers clinging on to their precious malt bottles like it was going to be their last source of hydration in the world. The annual San Miguel Beer festivities are held at White Beach. Bands, contests, dance-offs, you name it, Galera has it... until around 12 midnight. Ah huh, Puerto Galera still sleeps. If you're looking for a 24-hour party place, go to Boracay instead.

What's a vacation without booze?

So how does Puerto Galera compare to other beaches? It can't... coz it's a one of a kind beauty.

So there. This time around I think I'm a lot more kind to Puerto Galera and its tourists... which I, to put it harshly -- lambasted, in my original post.

Click here for more pics.

CRC problems... solved!

If you're like me who clicks on the shutter button hundreds of times during the day when you're on vacation, it would be inevitable that you may have to back your files up in some way. Until a few months ago, I used to keep a copy of all my images on my hard drive at home. The time came when disk space became scarce and I had to store my images elsewhere. DVD recordable discs came to the rescue. They're cheap, easy to store, and virtually lasts more than a lifetime.

There is, however, a problem with this kind of media. If you get a cheap disc to write on, you may end up having more Cyclic Redundancy Errors (CRCs) than you can handle if you retrieve the images on another computer. I don't know why, but some drives seem to have a mind of their own when it comes to data retrieval. Don't get me wrong, though. I check every disc that I burn with a data integrity checking software and everything up to that point turns out OK. The problem starts when you take the disc, pop it into another machine, and start getting your images back. Window$ can't seem to read the files properly, hence the CRCs.

I've experienced this fairly recently when I tried to retrieve my old photos from a DVD-R. CRCs abound like ants on steroids munching on a leftover Cadbury chocolate bar. I tried using different softwares to get my images (which were sentimental, by the way) back, and failed. I then came across a keeper of a software. I recovered all files from my disc without batting an eyelash.

It's called AnyReader.

Here's the original quote from their website

Effectively copies corrupt data from any type of disks or erroneous connections if standard copying methods fail. AnyReader supports resumed downloads from the remote PC if the connection was broken during the copy process (especially useful for unreliable Wi-Fi networks).

AnyReader is great for copying files from scratched CD/DVDs or defective floppy/hard disks. Normally when your computer is unable to copy files from a damaged disk it will abort and delete the part of the file it has copied. AnyReader will continue copying the file right to the end; any data that hasn't been recovered after several retries is replaced with blanks. This will allow you to effectively read every byte of information that can be read at all.

Note: Using AnyReader is safe and risk-free. The software does not write data to your original disks, but saves the recovered data to a new folder that you specify.

And here are situations where AnyReader might be able to help you out

• Your CD/DVD drive can't read bad, scratched or trashed disks;
• The standard copying method fails because of an error, such as "(Bad CRC) A cyclic redundancy check (CRC) checksum error occurred", "Cannot read from the source file or disk", an unknown error or a bad disk;
• You have 2 bad copies of a file that you would like to put right;
• You can't download a file across wireless LAN because of a bad connection;
• And many more of those...

In my case, I found myself in the second situation.

Don't throw away those CRC-laiden discs out of sheer frustration just yet. :)

Losing Puerto Galera

Due to being absent-minded (OK, stupidity perhaps), I deleted my previous post about my Puerto Galera travels.

Yup, the photo-essay-cum-text-narrative, which I painstakingly composed for a good hour of my life, is now gone. Permanently.

This incident gives me a very good excuse to write about the Oriental Mindoro municipality all over again. Perhaps I should be nicer about the tourists this time. ^_^