The Original Isla Puting Bato

Amirasolo and Other Essays

Part 1. Tondo on my Mind

Essay 12. THE ORIGINAL ISLA PUTING BATO

Beyond the piers is the breakwater, a long line of gigantic white rocks dropped into the sea just off the Manila North Harbor. The breakwater serves as a wall that prevents the big waves from rocking the docked ships too much during typhoons. We called that breakwater, Isla Puting Bato. That is the original Isla Puting Bato. Original because I learned recently that there is now another Isla Puting Bato around one kilometer farther north.

The Isla Puting Bato of my youth was the poor man's beach resort. My father Papa Nene used to bring me and my brother Rudy there when he was on vacation. He was a seaman. Isla Puting Bato was still detached from the mainland during the 1960s. You need to ride a banca to get there.

The first time we rode a banca to go to Isla Puting Bato I got very scared and almost panicked. The banca was overloaded and only about seven inches of the boat's hull remained above water.

It was only in the 1970s that an effort was made to connect Isla Puting Bato to the mainland. The resulting reclaimed or extra land became another squatter community, the so-called Luzviminda Village. Luzviminda Village was squatters area all right, but it was not slum. It looked more like any sleepy fishing village in the province. A few residents have boats. They made a living fishing and gathering talaba (oyster), tahong (mussel), and bilakong. Bilakong resembles tahong, but its shell is brownish and is very much bigger.

One time Papa Nene bought a bagful of bilakong at Isla Puting Bato which Mama Ninay cooked adobo style with lots of chillis. That was the first time I tasted that dish. I came to like it so much that years ago, whenever my wife Carina saw bilakong being sold in the market, she would buy an ample quantity right away, so that she can cook for me the dish she knew I like so much. But that as I said was years ago. Bilakong seems scarce nowadays. I hadn't tasted that for a long time now.

Isla Puting Bato was the cheapest beach resort there was during my growing up years. No entrance fee and no commuting expenses. All we had to do to get there was walk. And no need to bring much food either. My barkada and I only had to bring boiled rice and drinking water. And yes, we also brought salt and a bottle of spicy vinegar, the "sawsawan" or dip for the tahong and talaba we could pry from underneath the rocks. Although those shellfish were our only 'ulam' (viand), it was always happy eating for us. We were never dismayed by the meagerness of our fare. What mattered most was our camaraderie.

And that camaraderie, that bond, was put to a test one time when I nearly drowned. Although I can't swim well yet, I had no fear of deep water and was bold enough to dive into it time and again. We had with us an inflated car tire inner-tube which we used as "salbabida" or lifebuoy. When I saw it on the water floating farther and farther away from the rocks, I jumped after it to retrieve it. But what happened was each time I made a hand-stroke to get nearer and grab it, the farther the salbabida floated away. When I looked back, I realized that I was already very far from the rocks and in really deeper water. I was no longer confident that I can swim back on my own, so I swallowed my pride and waved at my friends and called for help. And they, like one man, jumped into the water to rescue me.

I was fascinated by swimming from when I was a kid. Ever since my father brought me and my brother to the breakwater, ostensibly to teach us to swim, I've always kept in my heart the longing to really learn to swim. But teaching someone to swim right is a rigorous process that can't be accomplished in an hour or two. So, I can say that it wasn't my father who taught me how to swim. I learned swimming by hanging out at swimming pools where there would be almost always swimming classes going on. I listened closely and committed to memory the swimming tips, and practiced on my own the drills the swimming teachers' made their pupils do.

Proof of my obsession with swimming was the naughty act I did when I was in grade six, when our maid Nora caught me inside our drum filled up with water. I was practicing floating. When she saw me doing that, she warned me that she's going to tell my mother. "Sumbong kita sa Mama mo, " she threatened. But she apparently never told my mother because I never heard from her. My mother never scolded me.

It was in 2018, I think, when I, with my cycling buddy Isko dela Cruz, tried to revisit Isla Puting Bato. We were on our routine tour of what I call Manila's storied places when we happened to passed by Pier 2. Isko knows of Isla Puting Bato because I've told him stories of my youthful escapades there with my barkada. He grew curious and insisted that we go to that place. But the entrance to Isla Puting Bato was so different now from what it was then. While it was still open space before, with no structures in sight, today, the place is so cramped with container vans and barung-barongs (hovels), inhabited maybe by a few people who are up to no good.

When we asked a security guard we saw there if it was all right for us to proceed further to see the breakwater, he dissuaded us. He said: "Naku! huwag, brod. Baka pagkamalan kayo. (Oh! Don't, brother. You might be mistaken for someone else.)" We take that to mean that the thugs living there might suspect us to be undercover cops or informers. I readily believed him because forty years ago, when the place still looked rural, my teen-age friends were robbed there at knifepoint by boys just about their age.