Occidental Mindoro | Municipality of San Jose

 

One of the many stops while on the bus

When I went to San Jose last February of 2012, I really had no idea on what is in the municipality aside from a few printed researched pages of the island hopping that I do want to do. Arriving at the airport early in the morning, we met Mang Alan, a tricycle driver who contacted somebody for our island hopping tour.  The Sikatuna Hotel and Resort I have seen from the net is fully booked and we have no other choice but to find any other place we could leave our things for the island hopping.

Greeeen! View from the bus going to Sablayan

We were a little hesitant if we should push through our IT for the day for the sky was so gloomy and the formation of dark clouds is kind of telling us that it would probably rain. But stubborn as I am, I still persisted. We finally found a hotel, Mindoro Plaza Hotel, near the center and went directly to Camawit Port for our boat man. Going there, I saw this house of stilts just beside the shore and people living there with only there small “banka” as their mode of transportation. We finally met the boat man, who actually is a fisherman, and talked about our plan. We decided to go first to the farthest to the nearest which are as follows: Grace Island,Ambulong Island, Ilin Island, and Manadi or White Island.

Sulit street food in San Jose

Yes, it definitely drizzled and rained during our boat trip and to add to my misfortune, my pink cell phone dived into the sea water and I lost my summer necklace along the way, yet I still felt thrilled seeing these new places that I have just seen over the internet. I was kinda sad of the gloomy skies but, nevertheless, was happy that I pushed through my plan.

We went back to our lodging place to get a good bath and slumber easy came for we were so tired after several hours on the boat. We never bothered putting sunscreen, deceived by the skies gloominess earlier. It was later that day when we realized we had sunburn all over!

San Jose's pride: Tamaraw
Statue taken from their airport

Woke up late and toured around San Jose Plaza while finding a good place to dine and chill. We found one near the Plaza named El TerrazaResto Bar and you wouldn't miss it, 'coz you can definitely hear the vocalist of the bar singing songs of different genres. We stayed and decided to call it a night at around 10:30, the streets by that time was already empty. 

Haggard. And look at my seat. I told you it was an old bus, right?

The next day, we were supposed to catch the 5am trip to Sablayan but our tired muscles and sunburnt skins says otherwise, we woke up late and ended up with the 1pm bus schedule. Because I can’t seem to tolerate the smell of the air-conditioned bus due to my motion sickness, we took this regular bus that really looks old and sluggish. The bus ride takes around 3-4 hours at around Php 110. After several stop overs, the finally arrived at Sablayan around 3pm.  And there we experienced serenity at Sablayan's Pandan Island.

Night shot at San Jose's Plaza

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