Communitriper

A trip to Siargao

Seeing people that are “living their dream” is always inspirational, it looks so rewarding and peaceful, breaking from the chains of conformism, doing what you always dreamt to do since you were a kid, it doesn’t have to make you huge loads of money or bring you world fame just a feeling of self fulfillment, last time I checked, you can’t put a price tag on that one.

In Siargao I met some people that torn a hole in the fabric of what we call "standard" and "normal" and just went out there to chase their dream and when I say out there I really mean out there.

Siargao is an island, aprox 437 square km in size, inhabitaed by a bit over 90,000 people, until 5 years ago you had to take a boat trip to mainland in order to call your loved ones or order some product, calling out for pizza wasn’t an option. (Acutally I don't think they have there Pizza places even these days)

Breaking out of the matrix and living up your dream is not that easy apparently (otherwise everyone would do that I guess), horrible rainy season that destroys roads and property, most of the year that goes without tourism and undeveloped services and amenities that goes without saying in the west for more than a decade faces those who chose to situate their families and lives in this surfers paradise.

Jerry, an Australian guy that runs the resort in front of the famous cloud nine surfing spot with his wife Susan was going back and forth between the land down under and the waves up over in Siargao, working and saving to build a cottage after the other, to develop another service for the favor of surf addicts visiting this remote destination, these days the Sagana resort is one of the best value for money resorts in the area of cloud nine, neighboring the 1o1 resort which is the more cheap solution for surfers on budget.

Another unique person I met is Alon, an Israeli board shaper that went on a surfing trip back in the Nineties just to fall in love with the place and with a local girl. They are now living full time in Siargao with their children, inspiring and romantic!

On the local pub, everybody’s happily drunk, a french candian guy is playing the guitar in the middle of the room while singing his heart out due to lack of technical means to amplify, luckily, he’s playing everybody’s favorites, from the beatles to more contemporary rock and there’s a drunken choir making the walls of this pub tremble, the promise we made ourselves to chug down not more than one beer tonight went down the drain as the beer went down our throats, the time is 3am, alarm clock set to 6am, in the distance you can actually hear the waves breaking on the shore, promising a hungovered yet exciting tomorrow.

(btw, we didn’t manage to get up on time that morning)