travelogue 2007.3d

the tamaraw beach resort is a nice place to be. it has several different types of accommodations from basic fan rooms, aircon rooms, to beach "huts" that are more small houses than anything "hut"-like. naturally, the rates go up from the basic (and shift into "high gear" from friday to sunday), but that's the nature of the convenience of it. ...you do get what you pay for, so to speak, but the basic fan room is all right with me -- after all, the point of a vacation is to get away, isn't it? no tv, computer -- okay, aircon is good if it's hot -- but strangely enough, given the resort's location on the beach and essentially at the foot of a mountain (i think) made nights really cool.

heck, i could sleep in the afternoon and not wake up with a headache (as usually happens to me if i do such a thing). ...or that could have been due to exhaustion from a lack of sleep the day before. nah, it's the heat that gets to me when i succumb to a siesta. so there: it's cool.

the plan was to rent 4 basic fan rooms, two people to a room. unfortunately, other concerns led one of the original 8 to back out, so there we were, the, hmm -- magnificent(?), nah -- seven of us, and four rooms.

now, in the haste of the planning phase, there was something that skipped my thinking entirely. one of our number was a girl. might have been tricky if we were 8, but with one less, she could have a room of her own. the decision was then made that all of us would chip in so that she wouldn't have to pay for the room completely -- we'd subsidize the share of her imaginary room mate.

but first things first. enter the resort. little sandy path between some single level structures. to the left, roofed and open sided area with tables and chairs; to the right, huts; straight ahead, through the coconut trees, the beach and the sea.

hmm. where's the office/front desk/reception?

strangely, there was a small sari-sari store at one end of the covered eating area. strange, because this turned out to be the place where you confirmed your reservation and all that. :-). well, why not, after all? multi-function. and, of course, tempt you with snacks while you're deciding on things and stuff about rooms and payments, and so on.

so, hand over deposit receipt (one of the steps to confirm the reservation was to deposit an amount of at least 2k into the resort's bank account at bpi). turns out the adventists had not of yet completely vacated the resort, so the rooms could not be made ready for occupancy post-haste.

good enough opportunity to try the food. captive market, yes, because white beach's mecca of food establishments was either a potentially pricey trike ride/potentially dangerous mountainside road trek/likely exhausting "batuhan" seaside walk away.

turns out that the food was quite agreeable to me. i had adobo and eggplant omelette (if that's the proper description for "tortang talong" -- weird, because everytime i go to puerto, i have a craving for this dish). the others, i forget what they had distinctly). i liked the adobo, there was a certain difference to the taste that was quite, as i noted at the beginning of the paragraph, agreeable with me.

so, nice place (but haven't seen the rooms yet, good (captive) food. things were looking up.

prices? well, on trips like these, my eyes glaze over the prices (high or low) - i just want to eat. next time i'll try to make notes. who knows, maybe do a review of the eating establishments just for the hell of it. :-)