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Category Archives: Islands

Travel Guide: Calaguas Islands in Daet Camarines Norte

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Calaguas Islands is increasingly becoming a popular backpacker destination. Located in the northernmost tip of Bicol, this beautiful beach is probably one of the best for Barkada destination in this part of Luzon.

Mahabang Buhangin in Calaguas Island (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

Calaguas is a group of islands that includes Tinaga Island and Guintinua Island, there are minor islands like Maculabo Island and other minor islands.In Tinaga Island, you can find the famous Mahabang Buhangin (Long Beach) or Halabang Baybay in Bicolano. If you are looking for a perfect camp site or a perfect white sand beach, you will surely enjoy Mahabang Buhangin.

If you are planning a trip to Calaguas Islands and you are looking for travel tips, sample itinerary, transportation guide and hotel recommendation then you just found the right page. This post aims to provide the most detailed Calaguas Islands Travel Guide to help you prepare for your future visit in this beautiful group of islands.

There are no hotels in Calaguas except Cottages. If you are more adventurous, you can choose to camp out. If you do not have a tent, you can ask the locals or your boatmen where you can rent a tent. Each tent is normally good for up to 5 individuals and it is usually rented at 300 400 pesos per night plus a camping fee of 100 pesos per person.

There are Sari-sari stores in some parts of the island but they dont sell hot meals. There are houses where you can ask to cook your meals but I guess its more exciting if you will cook your own meals so make sure to bring enough drinking water, food and booze. You will find some fishermen selling their fresh catch every morning or in the afternoon. There is also a small talipapa (market) in Brgy. Mangcawayan where you can buy fish. If you dont have cooking utensils, ask your boatmen, some of them will you borrow their cooking pan, plates etc.

Day 0 9:00PM ETD daet

Day 1 07:00AM ETA Daet/ Breakfast 08:00AM ETD for Calaguas Island 10:00AM ETA Calaguas Island/ set camp explore 12:00 NN- Lunch 01:00PM Siesta/ swimming/ explore/ picture happy campers 06:00PM Dinner 07:00PM Socials 10:00PM Lights out

Day 2 06:00AM Wakeup call 07:00AM Breakfast 09:00AM Prepare for Island Hopping (own pax Acct) 12:00NN Back to camp site 01:00pm Late lunch 04:00pm Explore the beach 05:00 PM Rest 06:00 PM Dinner

Day 3 06:00AM Wakeup call 07:00AM Breakfast 09:00AM Break Camp 10:00AM ETD Calaguas Daet 12:00NN ETD Daet 01:00PM Late Lunch 02:00PM Surfing Bgasbas 05:00 PM Rest 06:00 PM Dinner 09:00 PM ETD Daet Manila

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Travel Guide: Calaguas Islands in Daet Camarines Norte

SWARM | Strong! 5.6 EARTHQUAKE just strike MARIANA ISLANDS S of JAPAN 12 28 13 See ‘DESCRIPTION’ – Video

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SWARM | Strong! 5.6 EARTHQUAKE just strike MARIANA ISLANDS S of JAPAN 12 28 13 See #39;DESCRIPTION #39;
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SWARM | Strong! 5.6 EARTHQUAKE just strike MARIANA ISLANDS S of JAPAN 12 28 13 See 'DESCRIPTION' - Video

ASIA’S TERRITORIAL DISPUTES – JAPAN: Double-edged sword

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Editorial Desk

Asia News Network

Publication Date : 31-12-2013

How can Japan untangle the row with China over the Senkaku Islands?

Ever since some of the islands were brought under state ownership last year, some Japanese politicians and intellectuals have asserted support for filing a case with the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Toru Hashimoto, coleader of Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) is one such advocate. Hashimoto, who also is a lawyer, wrote on Twitter, "The most effective method is to use the ICJ. If the Senkaku issue is brought to the ICJ, all we have to do is to defeat China completely. But remember, this fight must be conducted verbally at the court."

Arguments in favour of turning to the ICJ were based on the assumption that Japan's assertions would be endorsed by the court. This approach also has the advantage of demonstrating Japan's policy of attaching great importance to the rule of law to the international community.

But going to the ICJ could be a double-edged sword.

The official government position is that the Senkaku Islands are clearly an inherent part of Japanese territory "in light of historical facts and based on international law". If Japan takes the case to the ICJ, despite the fact Japan wields effective control of the islands and there is no territorial dispute requiring legal resolution, there is a risk that the international community might assume the Japanese government has admitted the "the right of possession of the Senkaku Islands remains undecided".

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ASIA'S TERRITORIAL DISPUTES - JAPAN: Double-edged sword

Top 10 Islands — National Geographic

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From the National Geographic book The 10 Best of Everything

Leslie Thomas is a successful writer in England who's been in the business for more than 40 years. He has written more than 30 novels and several travel books, such as Some Lovely Islands, My World of Islands, and The Hidden Places of Britain. Given his interest in islands, we thought he was the natural source for naming the ten best islands.

Nantucket was once one of the richest places in America, built on the profits of the whale oil industry. Even today in the delectable old town there are fine brick houses with silver mailboxes.

Old-time sailors used to call Nantucket The Little Grey Lady of the Sea. On the misty morning I first arrived there, I could understand why. A woman was riding a horse along the beach to the utter delight of her family aboard my ferry, and she bore a banner that said Crazy Aunt Rides Again. It is a unique place.

These are the outriders of England, a clutch of tiny islands off Land's End, Cornwall, awash in the Atlantic and in a world of their own. Five are sparsely inhabited, and hundreds more islets, skerries, and rocks stretch out to the Bishop Rock Lighthouse. The next stop is America.

Balmy Atlantic air supports the spring flower industry. Part of the Duchy of Cornwall, the isles are owned by Prince Charles.

During my years of island finding, I have been to most places in the Caribbean Barbados, Antigua, Jamaica, and many islands much smaller. But the most unusual is Saba, east of the U.S. Virgin Islands, rising almost 873 meters (2,864 feet) above the sea. It is home to 1,500 inhabitants, many of whom have the same family name: Hassell.

Europeans flock to the Canary Islands in winter in search of a little sun. Temperatures range between 70F and 75F through January and February.

On Tenerife stands one of Europes loftiest peaks, Mount Teide, snowcapped in winter against a deep blue sky. You can watch whales or sail over to Gomera, which was the final stop Columbus made before he set out and discovered America.

Fair Isle is the most isolated inhabited island in Britain. It is home to only about 70 people, but hundreds of thousands of birds reside here as well. Most of the visitors to this wild and wonderful place are bird-watchers. Sheep placidly graze on the steeply angled meadows.

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Top 10 Islands -- National Geographic

The Faroe Islands are the frontier for new Nordic food

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The weather looks as changeable as atoddler's tantrums. Thank god we're not in a helicopter, Ithink to myself as the plane banks on its final approach and a cluster of snow-covered island-mountains erupting from the sea loomthrough the storm clouds.

This Nordic Hawaii is the Faroe Islands. Forget Copenhagen, or even Reykjavik, I'd heard this cluster of 18rocky islands in the middle of the north Atlantic, inhabited by 50,000 descendants of Norse renegades, is the new frontier in the new Nordic food movement. A place where a tiny band of determined pioneers, led by one visionary chef, is developing aradical, contemporary cuisine from the most meager culinary heritage.

An hour or so after landing, it seems I spoke too soon about the helicopter: it is the only way to reach the island of Stra Dmun, home to a couple of hundred sheep and the Petersen family's farm, my first destination in a three-day tour of the islands' nascent food scene. First challenge is to reach the helicopter which is idling on what is, essentially, an ice rink. With my arms occupied by luggage and a woolly hat, I am at the mercy of both natural and man-made gales. For every step forward I slide two back. In the end, afellow passenger comes to my rescue and drags me backwards on my heels like a shop dummy.

I assume he is a birdwatcher, like so many visitors to the Faroes, but the duffle-coated samaritan turns out to be John Gynther from the experimental cheese division (really) of a Danish dairy products company, on his way to check on the progress of some cheeses.

The humidity here is perfect for maturing cheeses, but nobody has tried it before, he tells me. If it's successful, I hope some of the best restaurants in the world will give it to their guests. It'll be the true taste of the north Atlantic, expressed in a cheese.

Arriving safely at the Petersen's farm, I hear a little about their lives. Their forefathers have farmed sheep here for over 200years. That little black tar cottage over there is the children's schoolhouse; a teacher arrives every Monday and stays in the attic. And those chocolate dots inching across the sheer hillside are their sheep, whose coats have evolved a yeti-like shagginess over the centuries.

Jgva Jn Petersen shows us into the hjallur, a wooden shed with vented walls where the sheep carcasses are hung by their feet to dry in the wind, flayed like some macabre art installation. This is the Faroe's famous rst mutton, he explains, semi-dried and fermented in the sea air. Dangling alongside is Gynther's cheese, which we taste in Jgva's low-ceilinged kitchen as his kids bring to the table their treasured toys and, at one point, a pet rabbit. The cheese is good, resembling a bitter manchego. The rst is chewy like thick-cut pata negra ham, with a strong flavor only just the right side of sheepy for me.

That evening, in the islands' capital, Trshavn, we eat in what appears to be a Hobbit dwelling but is actually a cosy, turf-roofed cottage housing a restaurant, arstova (dinner from about 55). We dip our heads to enter and are confronted with another dried sheep carcass flayed on a fancy, turned-wood stand. They're not squeamish, the Faroese as evidenced by the annual summer pilot whale slaughter, the grindadrp, which apparently has something of a family festival air (though obviously not for the whales, which are slaughtered despite being so riddled with mercurythat since 2008 the island's medical officers have recommended they are no longer considered fit for human consumption).

We are presented with a dr schnapps. This is my new favorite Faroese tradition: when arriving at a party or, sometimes, a restaurant, guests are presented with a glass of schnapps, refilled communion wine-style for new arrivals. We sit alongside a man called Mortan, who is one of life's enthusiasts. He insists we try some rst mutton paired with amontillado sherry, and there is an unexpected repartee between the wine's oaky notes and the rich mutton. The geographical connection is not all that tenuous either, Mortan points out, given that for centuries the Faroese exported salt cod to Spain.

The talk turns to the islands' long-mooted independence from Denmark and the oil that many believe lurks offshore and could lift the Faroes' economy which as far as I can make out is kept afloat by the SarahLund sweaters, made here by Gudrun and Gudrun, a company founded and run by two Faroese women, and sold in a shop on the waterfront. As the schnapps bottles are drained, the tables are cleared for traditional dancing ... national dress optional.

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The Faroe Islands are the frontier for new Nordic food

Departing from Kabatas Pier by Ferry on the way to Princes’ islands, Turkey – Video

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Departing from Kabatas Pier by Ferry on the way to Princes #39; islands, Turkey
Kabata is a quarter of Beyolu municipality (belediye) in Istanbul, Turkey. It is situated on the European shore of the Bosphorus, between Beikta and Karaky.

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Departing from Kabatas Pier by Ferry on the way to Princes' islands, Turkey - Video

Volcano Islands, Volcano and Dragons – Indonesia on board a schooner of Bali – Video

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Volcano Islands, Volcano and Dragons - Indonesia on board a schooner of Bali
Take a behind the scenes peek into the lives of liner crew members and discover the pleasures of a life spent at sea. Stopover will take you on prodigious tr...

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Volcano Islands, Volcano and Dragons - Indonesia on board a schooner of Bali - Video

The Jesus Film – Chamorro / Chamorru / Tjamoro Language (Guam, N. Mariana Islands, U.S.A.) – Video

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The Jesus Film - Chamorro / Chamorru / Tjamoro Language (Guam, N. Mariana Islands, U.S.A.)
The Story of the Life and Times of Jesus Christ (Son of God). According to the Gospel of Luke. (Guam, N. Mariana Islands, U.S.A.) Chamorro / Chamorru / Tjamo...

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The Jesus Film - Chamorro / Chamorru / Tjamoro Language (Guam, N. Mariana Islands, U.S.A.) - Video

New eruption may be brewing at El Hierro volcano in Canary Islands

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Dec. 27, 2013 at 5:48 PM ET

Spanish Civil Guard / EPA

A view of El Hierro island's coast on Nov. 6, 2011, after an underwater volcano eruption, in the Canary Islands, southwestern Spain.

Two years after a new underwater volcano appeared offshore of El Hierro in the Canary Islands, earthquake swarms and a sudden change in height suggest a new eruption is brewing near the island's villages, officials announced Friday (Dec. 27).

After the announcement, one of the largest temblors ever recorded at the volcanic island, a magnitude-5.1 earthquake, struck offshore of El Hierro at 12:46 p.m. ET (5:46 p.m. local time) Friday, the National Geographic Institute reported. Residents on the island reported strong shaking, and the quake was felt throughout the Canary Islands, according to news reports. The earthquake's epicenter was 9 miles (15 kilometers) deep.

Before the earthquake struck early Friday afternoon, the island's volcano monitoring agency, Pelvolca, had raised the volcanic eruption risk forEl Hierroto "yellow." This warning means that activity is increasing at the volcano, but no eruption is imminent. A similar burst of activity prompted a yellow warning in June 2012, but the volcano soon quieted down.

Parts of El Hierro have swelled nearly 3 inches (7 centimeters) in the past week, with the growth centered between El Pinar and La Restinga, according to Involcan, the Volcanological Institute of the Canaries.

More than 550 earthquakes rattled the island between Monday and Wednesday, also centered on La Restinga. About 30 of the earthquakes were greater than magnitude 3, Involcan said. The earthquakes are triggered by magma rising underground, fracturing rocks and swelling the surface as the hot rock reaches upward. "The earthquake swarm corresponds to a new magmatic intrusion," Involcan said Friday morning in a statement.

Friday's preliminary magnitude-5.1 earthquake was on the opposite side of the island from the ongoing swarm.

El Hierro was the site of a spectacular underwatervolcanic eruptionin 2011, which severely affected island fisheries and forced islanders to evacuate.

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New eruption may be brewing at El Hierro volcano in Canary Islands


  1. Islands