Amazed by the feat and fortitude, Winston hardly believed what my family and I had managed to achieve in the summer of 2009, and how we fancied over adversity from the adventure.
A typical family vacation would have entailed the usual hotel bookings and ticket reservations but our preparations for Matukad had the absence of those. Instead, it spanned weeks of burrowing the net in search of information appurtenant to the island, purposefully to build and shape our expectations and draw a guide on how to orchestrate survival and pleasure from the intended, forthcoming trip. After all, the rough and raw Caramoan islands have always been fittingly chosen as the host site of SURVIVOR, the reality game TV series. Itineraries and minute preparations were guided by the basic question “What if ____ ?“ - a question that incessantly triggered more unknowns, anticipating worst-case scenarios or creating environments to avoid worst-case scenarios, all smitten in a semblance of character appropriately described as obsessive-compulsive.
Not that the place is so remotely idyllic to have deprived itself of a decent hotel, but on the contrary, posh accommodations can be had at Gota Village Resort, a small cove facing antipodal to the islands. But visitors find it highly improbable to secure reservations because this whole complex, overwhelmingly, is booked to the brim the entire year and beyond by the Charlie Parsons outfit for the exclusive use of its production crew and castaways. The town proper of Centro, nevertheless, offers some modest lodging facilities that are mostly rural homes making space for extra rooms converted to accommodate backpackers and transients. Alternatively for the adventurous, one can pitch a tent on the outlying islands that are mostly unpopulated, each guarded by a couple of environmental sentries. And we intended to spend a night on uninhabited Matukad island.
Now, the tale of both adventure and pleasure can be told.
