Holy Week 2012 in Sta. Ana (Day 1)

For the past three years, I would spend Holy Week and my birthday out-of-town. As luck would have it, since I'm already based outside Manila, I was able to spend Holy Week and my birthday in Sta. Ana, Cagayan Province. What made these two events extra special was that my brother was able to join me. Being the big sister that I am (who happens to secretly enjoy spoiling my siblings), I treated my brother to the Sta. Ana trip as my birthday gift for him. We're both April babies, so it was like a double celebration for us. Also, this was my brother's (if I'm not mistaken) first "adventurous" trip. He had to take a bus to Tuguegarao City, and stayed there for a night without any idea what to do there since he had to take an earlier trip to the north. I wasn't able to get any bus ticket for April 4 so I arrived by plane on the 5th.

I booked our Holy Week trip/adventure with Travel Factor, scheduled on April 6-8. We arrived in Sta. Ana a day earlier so my brother and I were able to walk around the place. As soon as we rode on the van going to Sta. Ana, our adventure thus began. First, the van we took was really full. You can just compare the van to a can of sardines. I'm used to taking public transportation here, so I wasn't surprised with our van situation. Unfortunately for my brother, this was his first time to ride a van that didn't have a working A/C and the trip up to Sta. Ana was quite long...like, 3 hours.

Honestly, I didn't anticipate that a lot of people would go to Sta. Ana for the Holy Week weekend basically because it's just sooooo far. When we got there, the van driver was kind enough to help us look for a place to stay because all the inns and resorts we passed by were already fully booked. We did chance upon a tourist inn that still had one room available. Let's just say we were that desperate that we actually stayed in that place.

Pretty flowers in the tourist inn...these were the only pretty things there, haha

Once we freshened up, we checked out Port San Vicente where a lot of the bangkas and small ships would dock and pick up passengers. From the port, you can already see Palaui Island and Crocodile Island. I'll write about these two in my next entries :)

Our trike ride on our way to Port San Vicente

View from the trike

One side of the port

So after we stayed in Port San Vicente, we took another trike to the dampa we passed by going to the port. I wanted us to have an authentic dampa meal, since the dampa in Metro Manila well...the seafood ain't that fresh compared to the ones in Sta. Ana. I'm telling you, I died and went to seafood heaven. We had the freshest curacha (spanner crab or red frog crab) and blue marlin for less than 700 bucks, I kid you not! This already included rice and our beer :p If you're from Manila, you'd know that a typical meal in any dampa in Manila would cost at least 1000 pesos if the menu would include shrimps, crabs, or deep sea fish.

fresh, newly caught curacha!

Cute drawing on the door :)

Blue Marlin Sinigang and Curacha sauteed in butter and garlic 

Obviously VERY happy with the curacha, haha!

After dinner, we attempted to walk back to the town but gave up when we realized that it was going to be a very long walk. We just wanted to go back to the inn and sleep because we had to wake up very early the next day to meet up with our Travel Factor group.

Our first day in Sta. Ana was quite memorable, but nothing would prepare us for the next two days of our trip.