As a part of the travel adventure for my birthday, I decided to tour two of the most famous places in Pangasinan which are Bolinao and Alaminos for the weekend. This blog post is the Bolinao part of the trip and each of the places we've been to will be detailed in each own blog post.
The adventure started at 1 AM in EDSA Munoz which is our meeting spot and after buying everything we need, the long drive started at around 1:15 AM. After passing through NLEX, SLEX, TPLEX, and Tarlac/Pangasinan's provincial highways, we passed by Alaminos City at around 4:40 AM but that is for our next day's itinerary so we just headed straight to Bolinao Falls first. Thanks to GPS, we were able to see which left turn from the highway leads to the Falls as it is quite easy to miss because it was still dark around that time. What welcomed us is a very long stretch of rough, unpaved road, around 5KM in length, which leads to Bolinao Falls 1 and 2. We only decided to go to Bolinao Falls 2. It was still very early, around 5:30AM, when we got to the falls that's why we have the falls all to ourselves :)
After enjoying the cool waters of Bolinao Falls, most of us were getting hungry so we left at around 7AM and after enduring the long bumpy ride to the main highway, we are now headed straight to the Bolinao town proper. Our destination is the Bolinao Public Market and just beside it is the one of the well known restaurants in Bolinao which is Adora's Restaurant. After eating our fill, we went to the market to buy our supplies and then off we go to the resort that we will be staying at which is Bing's Beach Resort.
After leaving the town proper at around 10AM and traveling through patches of concrete and rough roads, we reached Bing's Beach Resort at around 10:45 AM. It's not easy to miss the resort as it extends on both sides of the road. All I can say comment about their service is that the staff of the resort is very accommodating. We got a single aircon room with 2 beds, good for enough for 5 persons and it just cost us P1500. They are kind enough to let us check in early even though the check in time for the rooms is supposed to be at 2PM. The resort had a huge beach front with not so very fine sand. We also availed a tour from them that would take us to the 3 caves in Bolinao, the Cape Bolinao Lighthouse, and Patar White Beach for only P100 per head.
 |
| Beach front of Bing'sBeach Resort. |
After resting in our room, our service tricycle for the tour arrived around 2PM. First stop is Wonderful Cave but much to our disappointment, the caretaker of the cave said that they are currently doing renovations that is why the cave is closed for the time being. Second to our list is Enchanted Cave which is also the most developed among the three caves in Bolinao. And since it's the most developed, it also has the most expensive entrance fee of all the caves. It has a large compound with tables for rent, a sari sari store, and even a swimming pool.
 |
| Our Honda City tour tricycle :) |
Last of the three caves is Cindy's Cave. I don't know if we had bad luck or what but when we arrived at the cave, there was a power block out within the vicinity and so, we are not allowed to swim because it's too dark inside the cave with only flashlights.
Moving on to the next part of the tour is the Bolinao Rock formations. I don't know if it really has an entrance fee but upon entering to the gates of what looked like a resort, our tricycle was stopped because they were asking us to pay P50/head entrance fee just for taking snapshots at the famous Bolinao Rock Formations. We thought it is just too overpriced so we skipped this one and off we go to Cape Bolinao Lighthouse. The road to the light house is too steep that some of us have to get off and push our service tricycle just to make it near the foot of the lighthouse. I don't know if it's just because of bad luck again but the ice cream vendor at the lighthouse told us that we can't get in the lighthouse because the coast guard who has the keys to the lighthouse already went away. Anyway, the view of Patar White Beach and the distant South China Sea on the viewing deck is still amazing.
After a few round of photo ops, we now headed to the famous Patar White Beach and the best part of it all is that it doesn't have any entrance fees. The tables aren't though and we can't even pitch a tent because there is also a fee for that! The white sand is very fine but the waves are a bit strong though but it still a very nice beach.
After viewing the sunset, our service tricycle picked us up at around 7PM and returned at the resort to clean up and cook our dinner. After cleaning up, we immediately go to sleep as everyone is tired from playing in the beach and we also have to wake up early the next day.
St. James Church of Bolinao
Bamboo Rice Cake - "Binungey"
The
morning comes and off we go back to the town proper to visit the
Bolinao Church and buy one of Bolinao's specialties which is the
binungey. After a bit of sightseeing in the town proper, we are now ready to go to the next destination of our trip which is the Hundred Islands of Alaminos City!
See my post here for the continuation of the adventure to Hundred Islands!
Bolinao, Pangasinan Adventure links:
- Bolinao Falls 2
- Where to stay in Bolinao: Bing's Beach Resort
- Enchanted Cave
- Cape Bolinao Lighthouse
- Patar Beach
No comments:
Post a Comment