Gone Fishing

As my first blog entry, I decided to post this first article of mine. Yep, im proud of it. heheh...

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You need not spend thousands of pesos just to have fun this summer. Just prepare your own kawil (fishing rod) and ride a fisherman’s boat. The rest will be an exciting escape and an eye-opener, guaranteed.

Everything started with that ride on the jeep—not inside but on top of it beside townsfolk with their bayong, sack of rice, or chicken in hand. You forget to mind the heat of the noontime sun. You even forget that it’s been an hour since the ride started from Poblacion, Nasugbu, to Calayo (one of the 42 barangays that make up Nasugbu town in Batangas).

There is only one jeepney making that single trip from Calayo early in the morning to Poblacion in Nasugbu. Miss this one, and your next trip will literally arrive the next day.

The jeepney arrives in Poblacion just before noontime. The passengers then buy their necessities at the Nasugbu Public Market. By 12, the passengers go back to the jeepney and start the ride back to Calayo. This time, the jeepney carried a few more passengers than when it left Calayo this morning.

As the jeep rumbled along the rough road, we constantly checked if our seats were as secure as our luggage. Despite a rough ride, the view from atop the jeepney had given us a great view of the barrios and natural wonders along the way. Upon arrival at Calayo (literally translated as "very far"), we looked forward to our next adventure: lunch "extraordinaire" of adobo and sardinas at Mang Ambrosio Sevilla’s home. Mang Busyo, fisherman and a long-time resident of Calayo, would be our tour guide, bodyguard and barkada for that day.

Perfect spot
After lunch, we rode on Mang Busyo’s banca and headed for that perfect fishing spot on a shoreline inaccessible by land. There, we built a tent made of tree branches and sack blankets, while some already cast their line into the water. Mang Busyo started a fire and prepared taktakin, steaming hot shellfish soup, while showing us how and where to fish. He said patience is required to catch fish, and one shouldn’t expect what kind of fish to catch, if any would be caught at all. What’s important is the effort.

We started by placing our bait on the kawil’s hook, then cast it to the water. He reminded us to keep the kawil as steady as possible so as not to startle the fish. In our first attempt at fishing, we were "lucky" enough to catch botete, a non-edible blow fish, after 20 minutes of patience and "expecting nothing".

By sunset, though, we had caught a number of fishes good enough for our supper. And we capped our day with an enjoyable swim in the cool, kind waters of the South China Sea. Dinner was served, featuring all our good catch grilled to perfection.

As the bonfire smoldered into the night, we looked forward to the next day’s round of fishing, and dreamed of another big catch in the morning. Another big catch before calling it a day and riding again on Mang Busyo’s boat headed for home this time.

Back on top of that lone jeepney bobbing up and down on dirt roads on our way back from Calayo to Poblacion, a realization likewise bobbed up and down in my mind. Life is like fishing. It takes patience to have a good catch. Things cannot be rushed, and we should wait for the right time to pull out that one string of opportunity that crosses our path, in a journey of life that’s as vast as the ocean.

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This article was published on Philippine Daily Inquirer's Summer Supplement Issue