We did not know the names of the islands and neither did we know which one was the best, so we just let our boatman guide us. He suggested that we cook and eat our lunch in Lopez Island, and that’s what we did.

Lopez Island was not crowded. There was a narrow beach and, most amazingly, there were big rocks with almost perfect flat tops. I just sat down under one of those rocks and Lee had the time of his life splashing and jumping in the seawater. Our boatman was cooking our lunch.

After about an hour, our lunch was ready. We spread our lunch under a big rock  that had a hollow top. It actually looked like a dented roof. We had newly steamed rice of course, newly roasted pork belly marinated in— I don’t know what. (Anyway, it was marinated and it tasted really good.) We had prawns and roasted squid with soy sauce, calamansi (Philippine lemon), and tomatoes.  Lee took out his canned San Mig Light beer from the cooler and I got my—you guessed it right—canned pineapple juice. By the way, boatmen cook meals for the boat guests and for themselves. We invited our boatman to eat lunch with us, but he politely declined our invitation. He wanted to eat his lunch alone, there in the boat. I threw a few glances at our polite boatman from time to time, and I noticed that he was carefully chewing his food while gazing at the blue sea, wind in his hair.

After our lunch, we cleaned the area and put the garbage in their designated bags, separating the biodegradable from the non-biodegradable. We put them in the boat; we did not want to accidentally leave them on the island. We would take  our garbage to back to the mainland and have them checked by the officers at the tourist center, to make sure that we did not put together the biodegradables and the non-biodegradables. After that, they would watch us as we put our bags of garbage into the designated containers.

Anyway, we just sat down under the big rock, looking out far into the ocean. Our boatman was diving, collecting edible seaweeds. For a time, Lee and I envied the lifestyle of our boatman.  His job was to tour people around, and he would get a commission from the fee that the tourists would pay to the boat owner. We loved how he loved the sea.  

When lunch settled in, Lee and I tried to take a nap under the big rock. After a few minutes, Lee was snoring and I was about to doze off when a big wave suddenly came crushing to us.  The boatman said that it was time to go to a part where there were no big waves, the one called the Children’s Island because the water there was shallow.

In Children’s Island, Lee and I rented a kayak. I forgot how much it was but Lee and I decided that we would be kayaking for the next two hours. The water was shallow, so shallow indeed that even little children were playing in it but just the same, Lee and I had to wear our vests. We later learned why. When we were kayaking, we reached some places, usually under big rocks, where the water was calm but obviously deep. Of course there were no children in those parts.

At one point, Lee and I started fighting because we could not decide how to row the kayak. Both of us were first time kayakers.

He did not believe in my ability to paddle so he volunteered to coach me. If we want to steer the kayak to the left, we have to paddle on the right, and vice versa. He volunteered to paddle by himself and our kayak hit a big rock. When I volunteered to paddle by myself, the kayak hit a woman.

We watched in amusement as the children and teenagers were throwing seaweeds at one another’s head. Lee and I started collecting seaweeds, as much as our kayak could accommodate. We started kayaking again, gathered more seaweeds, and when we finally had enough of kayaking, we went back to the shore and dumped our big collection of seaweeds  at the beach while laughing like crazy. The people asked us why we gathered seaweeds and we politely replied that we did not know why, because we really did not know why. Oh, the looks that we got. The motherly women just laughed at us. We attempted to bring back the seaweeds to the sea but the women insisted that it didn’t matter that the seaweeds were there.

Our boatman said that our tour would not be complete without visiting one famous island, the Pilgrimage Island.