Siargao Diary

Manila is hot, dark and loud as hell. Jeepney buses crammed full of people. Traffic jams at 11pm. It’s everything you probably don’t want your holiday in the Philippines to be. Everyone is smiling, strangely courteous and very concerned about your well-being. We feel a bit self-conscious.

After a hot and restless night in the cheapest hotel we can find we depart for Siargao approximately 800km to the South East. Two cyclones are whirling out in the Philippine sea.

As we drive out the gates of Siargao’s tiny airport, it becomes apparent how rural it is. Innumerable coconut tree plantations between dense jungle thickets line the new concrete road. Little hills give ways to vistas of rice paddies and mangrove swamps, fields dotted with caribou and tidy bamboo houses on stilts. Brown faced, white-toothed children wave furiously and shout hellos as you drive past. The radio in the taxi blares some 70’s Peter Tosh remixes. Life is good.

One of the smarter things I did when I arrived in Siargao was hire a local surf guide to baby-sit me. 23 years old Siargao local Jeremiah Gaborne Escamillan (referred to from here on by his nickname Loloy) was tasked with looking after me. By the end of my holiday he’d become a good friend.

For the duration of our stay we book into Kermit Surf and Dive Resort. The lush courtyard is littered with Helicondia and Sampaguita flowers such that it resembles a botanical garden of sorts. Three friendly mongrel dogs sun themselves on the carpet like grass. In the little garden next door a giant sow suckles 11 piglets. A slack line is strung up between a bungalow porch and a large coconut tree. The food is very good and the beer is cheap.

Stimpy’s, is a fun little left hander wave that breaks about 3 km off shore next to two little rock out crops. The peak forms over the reef of the outer lying island and runs into deep water forming a fun bowl about halfway down. It’s very smash-able if a little soft. It gets fairly crowded on subsequent surfs which was a little surprising considering the 30 minute boat ride required to get there. On a big east swell and a north wind Stimpies turns into a different animal, a sucking shallow powerful wave breaking below sea level. People ‘’bust out their knees there’’ I’m told.

The water is disgustingly warm.

I never completely get my head around surfing that famous right at Cloud 9. The first surf I had there is overhead and kind of shallow. Negotiating the drop on my backhand proves challenging. Taking off too deep or any sort of mistiming on the bottom turn and I end up having close up look at the reef. Loloy eventually broke it down that when it’s a biggish you have to paddle your ass off straight at the beach and then stomp your tail for the bottom turn if you make it. By the end of the first day I’m able to pull into a few tentative backhand barrels but it’s mostly closeouts. Eventually the crowd becomes too much and I get out feeling a bit frustrated.

Second surf at Cloud 9. The swell clears up and the lefts start working on the fuller tide. Tide is so important here. For about 45 minutes it’s wave after wave, take off, cover up, cutback, foam rebound. Rinse and repeat. After 3 hours in the water we limp home thoroughly happy. After 2 beers I’m fast asleep by 8pm.

Over the next couple of days the swell dies down between the two cyclonic systems and we busy ourselves in unashamedly tourist pursuits. SUP-ing the mangroves, drinking out of coconuts and doing yoga. We meet with a thoroughly eccentric former British expat named Liam, who arranges caribous for us to ride through the rolling green fields and up a small hill, we get drunk on Powroi, local moonshine made from fermented palm fronds and ginseng root and big bottles of strong Red Horse beer. While watching watch the sunset we race our caribou down the slope. Later in utter darkness we stumble home along the dirt track utterly shitfaced.

We have a few grovel surfs at Cloud 9 and around the corner at Tuason. Loloy starts practising doing massive alley oops of 2-foot sections while I bog rail, get horridly sunburned, cut my feet on the reef and generally make a fool of myself.

On a Sunday afternoon we attend a local cockfight. Outside, dozens of men holding giant aggressive steroid fed cockerels arrange bouts. Inside, two hundred or so wildly shouting, wildly gesticulating men stand on a rickety grandstand, which surrounds a floodlit sand arena. Punters and bookies toss money to each other above the heads of the crowd. Chickens tear each other apart in the ring, the blades attached to their spurs flash under the oversized luminescent bulbs, feathers fly, blood spills, people cheer wildly. Another chicken’s name gets crossed off the chalkboard. All in I lose about 300 Pesos on bad chickens. Loloy tells me that everyone eats chicken on a Sunday evening.

A general apathy to the trappings of the outside world sets in. Days of the week and to some extent even time becomes relative; we eat when we’re hungry, sleep when we’re tired, surf when it’s good, take off into the jungle and explore when it’s flat. We’re poised to take our first sips on the Kool-Aide.

One morning we surf a slightly onshore and crowded Cloud 9. It’s about 3 foot. The tide goes out dramatically and the crowd drops to 4 of us. The wave starts warping and sucking due to the lack of water beneath it. I start shitting myself somewhat and pull out of two decent ones last minute when I realise how shallow it is. Eventually I catch a smaller clean one and get a really neat little cover up before straightening out onto dry reef. I hobble back to shore over the exposed reef.

On my last day all hell breaks loose. A tropical downpour in the morning wakes me before my 5 am alarm. Loloy arrives and tells me that it’s big. When we arrive at Cloud 9 I get a little jumpy. It’s dark and gloomy and on the verge of raining again. 8-10 footers roll over the reef, bend, warp and spit their guts out before closing out in what was the safety of the channel the previous afternoon. A smallish bunch of very talented guys riding 6’8 guns are on it, but it’s wild and unpredictable.

We decide to surf quicksilver just to the north. It’s smaller and more manageable. I take a quick photo of a local 18 year old ripper as he pulls into a beautiful barrel, arches his back to shave off some speed and then does a big throw away air reverse off the end section. The tide starts dropping. I catch a few of the smaller ones and start feeling confident. As we watch massive set blast through the line-up at Cloud 9, which gets everyone hooting and cheering, a big A–frame catches us all off guard. At the last minute I turn and try my damnedest to paddle in but end up getting hung up and pitched into the flats. Instead of trying to ride it out like I’ve been taught, I foolishly kick my board away and do my best running man impersonation as I free fall, miraculously avoiding reef on the first impact, only to get sucked over and slammed a second later. I pop up a little winded and scratched up, but relatively okay. A few Filipino guys are laughing. One looks at my back and says that at the very least I’ll leave with a souvenir.

After licking my wounds Loloy tells me he’s organized something special. We head out to a reef pass known as Pansukian. I saw it breaking on one of my first days on the island and was intrigued from the outset. It’s a few kilometres offshore between the uninhabited Naked Island and Daku Island, which is home to a little fishing community. Rarely breaking and rarely surfed, I’m excited as all hell.

Here it becomes hard not to wax lyrical somewhat. Pansukian is a sort of warm, un-crowded J-Bay. The wave is long, fast and breaks over a relatively deep live coral ledge. The reef forms a sort of giant semi circle from what I can make out, and with a big east or south swell the wave just follows that curve. It was hardly perfect when I surfed it, but it’s a big beautiful crescent moon of wave, miles from any shore.

We surf with 6 or so others who sit mostly at the end bowl while Loloy and I surf further up the point until, inevitably we get caught on the inside on a bigger set and end up getting mercilessly washed through to the channel. In the distance I can make out a big as yet unnamed left hand slab starting to break. Later, on the boat ride back while scratching sea lice bites, the onshore slowly begins to puff as it starts getting dark. I am deeply happy.

The next morning is filled with the packing of bags and the saying goodbyes to new friends. I really don’t like goodbyes. The drive to back to the airport seems far shorter than on the day we arrived. The kids still wave furiously and still shout hellos as we drive past.

If you’re interested in visiting this beautiful part of a beautiful country please do have a look at: Kermit Surf and Dive Resort and Droppin Carabou Rides. Photo Credit to my girlfriend Laura and Salt and Candy.