Just keep swimming

Netnet Camomot .

ONCE it’s raining cows and carabaos in Cagayan de Oro and you happen to be downtown, you immediately rush to uptown and wait for the rain to pass.

In El Nido, however, especially if it’s your last day there, a rain of cows and carabaos won’t stop you from availing of the inland tour but with some cancellations. You don’t go to the first beach and the second beach with the zip line nor to the waterfall. You choose only one destination and that’s Nacpan Beach, famous for its twin beaches whose bikini shape you can appreciate with the help of a drone. The imagination will take care of the appreciation part if there’s no drone.

While swaying through the long, winding and mostly unpaved road to Nacpan, the driver/tour guide tells you, They close this road when it’s too flooded to traverse on. And you start thinking, Oh, how to return to the main road later in case the rain continues? That’s the question.

You arrive at the beach resort at past 7 am, and find the waves are great for surfing, not swimming. You brought swimwear, not a surfboard. Besides, you don’t surf. So, what to do while waiting for the rain to hopefully progress to cows and dogs?

The beach resort, where you were expecting to have breakfast, is still closed and the guy there tells you it will open at 9 am. But he’s the employee of the contractor who’s repairing the place so what does he know?

Like some kind of SOP—standard operating procedure—in case you need assurance this is the right beach, there’s the usual I-Heart sign.

I Heart Nacpan. But with the rain, you can only love that sign from afar, so, you take a video of the sign’s back side, with the huge waves as background, plus the dogs that happen to be “conversing” right there at the beach.

A tourist won’t find the rain and floods alarming. He doesn’t live in Pinas. He’s not familiar with low pressure area, habagat, amihan, leptospirosis, and the yellow, orange and red weather alerts. So, the Pinoy tries to educate him.

Still, it’s refreshing to talk with someone who’s clueless about the weather. His positive outlook somehow lifts you up and convinces you that everything’s gonna be alright despite the huge waves and the rain and the threat of floods and landslides along the way.

The secret to life must be to trust that all this positivity will translate to good weather that allows one to swim with the fishes.

The only goal you had for the last day in this El Nido vacay was to walk along the line where the twin beaches meet.

What to do while waiting for the rain to stop? You sit around and stare and listen. Stare at the back side of I Heart Nacpan. Stare at the waves. Listen to the waves. Stare at the dark clouds. Stare at the rain that has covered some of the islands. Stare at the dog that’s sleeping nearby. Stare at the beach resort resto’s leaking roof. Listen to the rain that’s creeping through the leaking roof.

So, you woke up early for this. Yay.

But you’re grateful. You had three straight days of island- and lagoon-hopping, what more can you ask? Rain during the inland tour forces you to finally relax and simply savor everything without the pressure to see as many tours as you can.

The best vacation is still the one where you sleep, eat, and stare at the green trees from the room with a view. Sleep again, eat again, stare again. Repeat.

If you love the sea, better live near the sea so your life becomes a vacation forevermore. If you love the mountains, live near the mountains. Don’t live near the sea if you love the mountains and vice versa. Well, easy to say, but full of challenges in reality. Same goes for career choices—easy to say which is which and for whom. Reality, however, always bites and one goes for what’s practical.

For vacations, reality can also bite and one has to be flexible especially with climate change, and he realizes Dory’s famous quote is also the secret for a memorable vacay: “Just keep swimming.”