The Tourist Gaze

It’s been six years since I’ve last been in Guimaras, and the island still feels as familiar like I’ve been here just last year. The women’s group my mom is with wants more adventures, so today we’re doing this road trip in this island off the coast of Iloilo City. Aboard three vans, we’ve ridden a barge from the Iloilo City port, disembarked on the Guimaras port in the town of Jordan, and now plying the road to Raymen Beach Resort in Nueva Valencia town — pretty much just like I did in 2018.

The resort is the starting point for the island hopping tour, something I couldn’t afford to do back then, so this is something that’s new for me in this Guimaras trip. Unlike the boat trip to the Gigantes, though, this boat tour stays mostly near the coast, stopping by hidden beaches tucked within the Guimars coastline’s coves. Two of the notable stops are the Nagtago Beach and the Ave Maria Island.

The former’s name roughly means “Hidden Beach,” named probably because the beach itself is hidden from plain view. Getting there involves either riding a boat and passing through a small passage between two large rocks, or climbing a short set of stairs and walking through a small forest before descending to the beach. It’s a beautiful place to swim and do some photo ops, but on this day, it’s not really secluded as we share the place with a few other groups.

We do have the Ave Maria Island to ourselves, though. Here, the sand is whiter, the waters are more turquoise, and the space is wider. The boatman lends me a pair of goggles so that I can see the marine life, though apart from some small fishes, I don’t find any.

Boat tour concluded, we return to Raymen, shower, and eat lunch.

From there, we visit the Trappist Monastery, which was established in 1972 and remains the only Trappist monastery in the Philippines. Then we head to the newly constructed but yet to be opened provincial capitol (which was still in the planning stage when I last visited). Then we stop by at the pasalubong center, buying a lot of mango-based products. We also stop by at the manmade forest, which looks like the venue of so many Hollywood horror movies, and the purported smallest plaza where a statue of Philippine national hero Dr. Jose Rizal stands. Finally, we visit San Lorenzo Wind Farm, where windmills tower over an area with scenic views of the surrounding landscape and coastline. Maybe it’s the cloudy skies, but the views are not as spectacular as in Pililia in Rizal province, but it’s still pretty nonetheless.