Casapsapan Beach is a 3-hour 22 minute drive (according to google maps) from Baler. We left our homestay at exactly 5am, after having more suman and coffee for breakfast. If you get the chance, look for their suman, I swear it's so good and would make a nice pasalubong. We bought ours from Yolly's the night before.
It still rained the entire night and even as we were about to leave, the sky still looked like this:
And so we left Baler to go to Casapsapan Beach in Casiguran, hoping that the weather would change.
We requested to pass by Ampere Beach, which was a 30-40 minute drive from our homestay. I've seen photos of the boulder beach and I thought it would be awesome to see the sunrise from here. Also, it was probably the closest thing to Batanes' Valugan Boulder Beach that I will see in Luzon.
When we were planning this trip, I came across a blog about Casapsapsan Beach and I thought it was amazing. It was a long drive from Baler but my travel policy is simple: if you want a good beach, be prepared to travel far. We didn't know we were in for a surprise.
It felt like we had to cross 3 mountains to get there. Haha. Seriously, the roads were not even finished yet and I remember passing by this paved road but we had to stop abruptly because the road was not finished and it was a foot drop to the dirt road. So naturally, we had to turn back and start over. There were also sharp turns wherein our driver had to extra be careful because only 1 lane can be used. The road to Casapsapan is definitely not for the faint of heart.
Past the 3-hour mark and we still couldn't see any signs of Casapsapan. Our driver mainly depended on Waze but there were instances of dead GPS spots and we had to go based on instinct. It was always a debate whether to take the dirt road vs the paved (and possibly unfinished) road. On one of our dirt road adventures, the van even got stuck in the mud so we all got out and the boys (except S) had to help push it back to paved ground.
I guess we were causing a scene at this point that a man from out of nowhere came up and looked at us. We asked how far Casapsapan Beach is and he said that the beach was walking distance already. It was already drizzling when we got out of the van but we still proceeded to take photos along the coconut tree-lined road. And just as we were about to do jump shots, it started to rain baby elephants!
We were all drenched and didn't want to ruin the van with all our wet clothes so we walked the rest of the remaining 10-15 minutes to the beach.
There was an entrance fee of 20 pesos per head at the resort. We also rented the huge cottage for 400 pesos and the caretaker offered to cook our lunch for a fee. We had inihaw and sinigang na isda. All-in-all, we only contributed less than 200 pesos per person. Not bad since we had the beach all to ourselves. :)
Edit: The sand in Casapsapan Beach is not as white as that of Boracay's but it's almost as powdery. We tested walking on it at lunch time and it didn't hurt our feet at all!
After lunch, it was time to hit the waves, er, be hit by the waves. Haha. There was a riptide that was super visible in the middle of the sea and we were warned not to swim in that area. To the right side of the beach, was a mini Sabang Beach where you can even surf. No kidding. No one knew how to surf in our group nor did we have any equipment so we just played around with the waves. Kinda like those wave pools you see on tv.
When we could wave-pool no more, we just took photos and waited for our turn to shower. There was only one working shower in the resort and the water pressure is so low that it took so long for one person to finish taking a bath.
It still rained the entire night and even as we were about to leave, the sky still looked like this:
And so we left Baler to go to Casapsapan Beach in Casiguran, hoping that the weather would change.
We requested to pass by Ampere Beach, which was a 30-40 minute drive from our homestay. I've seen photos of the boulder beach and I thought it would be awesome to see the sunrise from here. Also, it was probably the closest thing to Batanes' Valugan Boulder Beach that I will see in Luzon.
When we were planning this trip, I came across a blog about Casapsapsan Beach and I thought it was amazing. It was a long drive from Baler but my travel policy is simple: if you want a good beach, be prepared to travel far. We didn't know we were in for a surprise.
It felt like we had to cross 3 mountains to get there. Haha. Seriously, the roads were not even finished yet and I remember passing by this paved road but we had to stop abruptly because the road was not finished and it was a foot drop to the dirt road. So naturally, we had to turn back and start over. There were also sharp turns wherein our driver had to extra be careful because only 1 lane can be used. The road to Casapsapan is definitely not for the faint of heart.
Past the 3-hour mark and we still couldn't see any signs of Casapsapan. Our driver mainly depended on Waze but there were instances of dead GPS spots and we had to go based on instinct. It was always a debate whether to take the dirt road vs the paved (and possibly unfinished) road. On one of our dirt road adventures, the van even got stuck in the mud so we all got out and the boys (except S) had to help push it back to paved ground.
I guess we were causing a scene at this point that a man from out of nowhere came up and looked at us. We asked how far Casapsapan Beach is and he said that the beach was walking distance already. It was already drizzling when we got out of the van but we still proceeded to take photos along the coconut tree-lined road. And just as we were about to do jump shots, it started to rain baby elephants!
We were all drenched and didn't want to ruin the van with all our wet clothes so we walked the rest of the remaining 10-15 minutes to the beach.
There was an entrance fee of 20 pesos per head at the resort. We also rented the huge cottage for 400 pesos and the caretaker offered to cook our lunch for a fee. We had inihaw and sinigang na isda. All-in-all, we only contributed less than 200 pesos per person. Not bad since we had the beach all to ourselves. :)
Edit: The sand in Casapsapan Beach is not as white as that of Boracay's but it's almost as powdery. We tested walking on it at lunch time and it didn't hurt our feet at all!
After lunch, it was time to hit the waves, er, be hit by the waves. Haha. There was a riptide that was super visible in the middle of the sea and we were warned not to swim in that area. To the right side of the beach, was a mini Sabang Beach where you can even surf. No kidding. No one knew how to surf in our group nor did we have any equipment so we just played around with the waves. Kinda like those wave pools you see on tv.
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| My face, though. |
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| Oh yes. |
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| Big boys with their toys |
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| We did this over and over and over. |
At around 3pm, everyone was done taking a bath and ready to go. We wanted to leave early because it was still a long drive back to Baler and then to Manila and we didn't want to risk traveling through the broken roads in the dark.
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| The mandatory group jumpshot |
We reached Baler at around 8pm, where we stopped and had dinner at Gerry Shan's Place. By 9pm, we were on the road again and off to Manila. We arrived at our drop-off point (McDonald's Mindanao Ave.) at around 2am already.
It was different kind of roadtrip for this bunch and it was definitely our 'huling hirit sa tag-init' because for most of us, it will be back to reality in a few days.
*Thanks to Sue and Pao for the grabbed photos.
