Places: Forest Lake en Cielo Cemetery / San Juan Surf Site (San Juan, La Union)
Date: 26 May 2008

I promised Aunt Julie I will drop by daddy’s grave before I leave, so I decided to do that on this day, so I could do all sorts of preparation the next day before I go to Vigan and head home afterwards. I was in the Internet Cafe when brother texted me to wait for me because he will come with me.

It was a bit late when we got there because we had to wait until the jeepney gets full. Not only that, jeepneys here are a bit slow as well. When we got to the cemetery, rains were threatening to pour, but brother and I still stayed for a while and had a quiet chit-chat with dad. It was just a casual hi, hello thing — I didn’t want to get mushy because I don’t want to recall past heartaches brought by his sudden death. It was time to embrace hurt and realize that the world doesn’t end with my grief.

As we were about to prepare to leave, we saw another rainbow. Wow! My third rainbow for this vacation! It wasn’t as clear as the one I saw a few days before, but I love this one because I can see it whole! Too bad my camera can’t capture the rainbow in full!

Usually, when we check out the sunset here in San Juan, we would always check it from the beach in Puerto de San Juan resort. And in all those times, I would always complain why can’t I see any surfers if this town was dubbed as the “Surf Capital of the North?” I found all ironic, until brother told me that most of the surfers do their surfing in another part of the beach.

Puerto de San Juan resort was just walking distance from the cemetery (quite a long walk, actually), but because I wanted to see at least one surfer, brother said we still need to take another jeepney ride, but it wasn’t really that far — probably about 7 minutes from the cemetery. When we got there, I realized that this beach was much better that the one by the PSJ Resort.

Brother and I didn’t bring any fresh clothes, and we only checked the place for the purpose of checking the page (and for him to show me that surfing do exist in San Juan), so the only way we could “surf” was pose at that concrete wave with surfboard. Well, at least I could say I rode a real surfboard! Hahahaha. Whenever I was with any of my siblings in a public place, it would always be a laugh trip, so even if we had just a few shots by the fake wave, it took us a lot of time because we would laugh while doing the pose!

The waves here aren’t as big as the ones in Siargao, but people can still surf. It was nearing night time when we got there so we weren’t able to see that much surfers, but there were some booths by the shore that offers surfing lessons. I didn’t dare ask how much, because like I said, we were just there to check out the place.

The sunset here was much more dramatic and specatacular, maybe because of the rock near the shore, or the color of the sunset. Whenever we were in PSJ, I didn’t see the whole surrounding turn orange, but here, I am so loving the colors!

Some of the sunset photos:

Raindrops suddenly poured, so brother and I decided to leave. The less than one hour encounter with the surf site and the sunset was something I want to see again. I told brother as much as I wanted the view from PSJ, I prefer checking the sight from here. He said there’s an annual surf festival here last week of October, so if I have a chance, I hope to check the place again.

*** Jenn ***