Getaway in Coron

TELL me now, who was the poet who wrote that ''remoteness is

the founder of sweetness''? The line lingered in my mind as I

turned into a mass of guilt for trading a weekend in Baguio with

my family for a first-time tour of Coron in northern Palawan with

a gaggle of 45 travel operators and media people.

As our group boarded the ship Our Lady of Lipa at Pier 14 on a

Friday eve, my concern was how to maintain my sea legs.

After a fitful sleep, I joined the others on the upper deck to

watch dawn break over Coron Bay and a family on a banca and

styropor box diving for coins thrown by some passengers. On

land a drum and lyre corps struck up ''Yellow Submarine'' and

other happy tunes. We appreciated how the band members and

smart majorettes rose so early to welcome us.

From the town pier we transferred to the pumpboat Busuanga

Dream that took us to the Dive Link Resort on Uson Island,

where we were billeted overnight. The harbor and cottages came

in Caribbean colors of yellow, red and blue. The bathroom tiles

were merrily set in a way that reminded me of a Mondrian

painting.

A very physical sked had been prepared for us. Agatep

Associates' Allay Dy and WG&A's Gian Galvez invited me to go

kayaking. Away from the shouts and laughter of the group, an

eerie silence engulfed us. We could hear nothing but our awed

intake of breath and the splash of the paddles in the water as we

glided over swaying seaweeds, past corridors of limestone cliffs

and on pathways of liquid turquoise. The interlude took less

than half an hour, but it was magical.

The boat Segundus took us to the Kayangan Lake. Getting to

the cleanest fresh-water lake in the country, an environmental

Hall of Famer, required a 15-minute, uphill-then-downhill climb.

Then I entered the cool waters where underneath lie castle-like

rocks, but my bad eyes couldn't make them out. Bobbing about

in an orange life vest, I struck up a conversation with Renato

Contis of Bayan Ko Tours & Travel.

An Italian who has been living in the Philippines for 25 years

and whose colloquial Tagalog is marked by oo naman's and hay

naku's, he said the beauty of this Coron weekend sailaway

program was that after office hours on a Friday, you could go to

the pier, rest aboard ship, enjoy a full Saturday and Sunday in

the province, and by 9 a.m. Monday, be back in Manila.

And the program has well-calibrated activities so the stress is

evenly distributed, Renato added. What's more, it gives local

tourists the possibility of going to Palawan for a total package

of P5,900.

''Any effort that promotes domestic tourism should be

encouraged,'' he said.

On the boat we had a kamayan lunch of grilled fish, chicken

adobo, coleslaw and rice, with sipuna (tiny mangoes) to cap the

meal. Still in our wet togs, we proceeded to the Skeleton Wreck

site from where I immediately swam toward the shore.

Linda Kwok of Islands Travel & Tours, who had stuffed creamy

sand into an empty water bottle to bring back to her office,

suggested that we burrow in the sand. And that we promptly

did. We lay down side by side without headrests underneath a

tree, until our companions broke our reverie and called us to join

the next part of the journey.

The Coron Youth Club Beach, ideal for picnics, is where some

youths of the town go every Saturday to clean up the debris.

On the way to the Maquinit Hot Springs we saw the Siete

Pecados, of which our guide Maween Reyes told of the tale of

seven children who disobeyed their mother's warning not to go

out in the storm. They set out in a boat and disappeared, and

their bodies were never found. From where they must have

drowned seven islets grew.

On the way back to the boat, I touched my first live starfish and

put it where it couldn't be stepped on.

Back at Dive Link, Noel Matta, one of the resort's partners and a

repository of local lore, regaled me with stories of the 37 or so

World War II wrecks situated mostly in Coron Bay. (Of these,

divers can reach only 14; the rest are just too far down.)

The Allied armies defeated the Japanese forces in Indochina.

The Japanese retreated to Palawan, camouflaging their ships as

islands, but the American pilots spotted them and wondered

why the islands were moving. Gen. William ''Bull'' Halsey sent

his planes to bomb the ships in September 1944.

Noel is passionate about not letting Coron become another

Boracay, which to him has become too commercial with its

five-star hotels, big resorts, jet skis and loud disco music.

The goal is to maintain the pristine condition of the coral reefs

and forests. He bewailed the fact that despite ordinances

banning the dumping of raw sewage into the bay, the municipal

government tolerates houses, restaurants on stilts and the

abattoir with no septic tanks.

What appalls him further is the general indifference to the

valuable brain corals, which take 50-100 years to reach a

diameter of one and a half to two meters. There is a law against

the harvesting of such marine life, but he saw through

binoculars men transporting live brain corals for use as landfill

in the town property of a high government official.

He said that when he apprehended them, they told him, ''Coral

lang naman 'yan (Those are only corals),'' and added that it was

easier to get these than to quarry rocks from the river.

With help from the Environmental Legal Assistance Center, he

filed a case with the Ombudsman and the Regional Trial Court.

What they don't realize is that ''compared to 20 years ago in

Palawan, only 15 percent of the coral reefs are left,'' he said