Our route takes us through more village areas. The houses here are even smaller, most no larger than the summerhouse in my garden and on small stilts. More kids playing around, chickens, goats, but also the flutter of a lace curtain in the breeze, interior design is obviously important here. One tiny hamlet has a big church. On we bump through banana plantations to arrive at the entrance to the beach where I have to fork out 5 peso’s entrance fee. Bearing in mind that 5 peso’s is about 3p it’s hard to imagine that the cost of the labour to collect this adds up to anything like profit. But we go on for another couple of hundred metres and are now asked for 10 peso’s – I think the is the trike park fee.
I was puzzled as to why such a beautiful long beach was so underdeveloped when Panagsama, which has not much of a beach to speak of was, so much more developed. I visit the basket lady at the bottle museum and book exchange and ask her. She was still making baskets by the way.... Apparently until the great typhoon of 1984 (followed by one almost as bad in 1992) that destroyed it, Panagsama beach was the same as White Sand, a long sweeping crescent. But when they rebuilt they built the new buildings too close to the shore not giving it room to recover. And so far there is not enough business to develop White Sand as well. So it stands empty apart from one lonely trader trying to sell pearl earrings. There was me on the beach and one guy just coming in from snorkelling. When I turned down his earrings the trader went straight to the snorkeller who was still in the water in his wetsuit – the trader seemed surprised he wasn’t interested in said earrings! But it did surprise me in one way, I hadn’t realised that Cunard had launched the QM3, but there it was in all its glory, awaiting its passengers!
The basket lady also tells me about the effect tourism has here. Simple things that we wouldn’t think of. Because tourists have more money they are willing to pay more for things and it puts the economy out of joint. Take fish for example – because the tourists like to eat it the price has gone sky high and the locals can’t afford it any more. I always thought that eating locally caught fish was a way to help a local economy, but not here... But even with high prices, the fishermen still don’t make too much money and the tourists provide the market for them to get their daughters into prostitution. I’m told that a lot of the once fishermen have now got big houses as a result of their daughters profession. It’s obvious for all to see, yet more large Germans arrive today holding hands romantically with their small Filippino girlfriends.
They also tell me the problem with education – it used to be free but no longer. Few parents can afford to put their kids through anything but basic education and even more girls end up in prostitution or going abroad as domestic workers. The Philippine economy is also in a bad way – power and water are in short supply. Last week they started turning the power off for an hour every day, they think water might be next. It’s hard to see a way out of it all.
But White Sand Beach was beautiful, it was all that was advertised – it did what it said on the tin!
