(photos by Rico L and Renante V)

Okay, so I should have brought a camera for the Holy Week last year.
I should have brought a camera so I could have taken photos of what I'll be talking about below:

Bantayan

Summer stop.
...Sta. Fe and its almost-surreal long-stretch of white sand and various-blue-shaded-ocean. We were able to go in, out, free of charge, at the Kota Beach, (with the historical entrance of the Spanish kota (fort)) where the richest and most prominent of the province would go to for the summer (as relayed by Mon Picornell of Globe).

I had a side-trip at the Sugar Beach where I borrowed that blue shirt with the white heart printed on it from Liyo, and that blue crochet bikini from Chai/NikkiNaAteNiChai. Unfortunately, I had the huge mistake of packing less stuff -- and unlike the usual me, decided on trying the travel-light-principle, which was apparently very very very light this time.

We stayed at the ancestral (one-plus-century-aged house) home of the Escarios, where the front lawn area could probably be the earliest piece of land reclamed in Bantayan.

The highlight was Saints Peter and Paul Church which turned 406 years old this year. It also houses the Saints Peter and Paul Church Museum. There I saw the original papal indult, which stated (in centuries-old print) the pope's permission to the Bantayanons, a fishing community, to eat meat and pork on Holy Week and Good Friday.

The Carroza Festival which circles the Poblacion on Good Friday is Bantayan's rightful pride, a procession almost similar to that of Cebu's Sinulog but with the religious stance more serious, and with less "commercialization disturbances." The men follow the procession of the life-size images of the stations of the cross, and fight for the flowers adorning the carrozas; this to be made into a good-luck-charm.
The children are dressed in costumes of saints and angels in the procession; this is the Panaad, in gratitude of a favor granted from the saints and angels. All the hassles of the long travel to the famed islands of Bantayan was very much worth it.