Location: San Andres, Quezon Province, Philippines
Note: This is a part of my 2D1N Burias Islands Tour package.
As seen from its map below, Alibijaban Island is shaped like a penis. Its area is measured at more than 400 hectares of which the 140 hectares is a protected mangrove forest sanctuary. Its coasts are dotted with white sand beaches of unspoiled clear waters wherein looking from the surface of the water, seabed can be transparently seen inhabited with sea grass and coral reefs. According to the locals its surrounding seas are observed to have been visited by whale sharks and mantra rays.
Visiting the island was not really our purpose because we had a tour package to Burias Islands. Part of our package was the round trip van transport from Manila to San Andres (Quezon Province) and vice versa. It was such a long road trip. It is in San Andres that there is a port where our boat package awaited us. San Andres is a part of the province of Quezon and it is on the southern part mainland of Luzon Island. The road travel was indeed a long trip as it was 6 1/2 hours for a distance of 316 kilometers via Pan-Philippine Highway/AH26. We left Manila at 12:30 midnight and arrived in San Andres at 7:00 A.M. Since, it was a chartered van transport, we did not have stopover except when we request the driver to stop in a gasoline station to urinate.The place itself relies it economy from the populace inhabiting the surrounding islands where they buy their goods and commodities. The port has a tourism office which regulates its tourism activities for island hopping.
San Andres is a tourist-friendly place with lots of stores to buy food supplies. The place has some houses at the port offering shower services with a fee of P10 per head. Vendors selling fruits and their local sweets delicacies abounds the port.
In the morning, when we arrived after a 30-minute boat travel crossing from San Andres Port to Alibijaban was a high tide. However, as early as 10:00 A.M. sea level gradually go down resulting to a low tide at mid noon. The beach line extends to more than kilometer to the sea. Thus, afternoon trips are not advisable, unless tourists had to walk far to board the boat.
There was confusion with our tour then because the driver of the van just do the instructions from the tour operator and he was left at the port and even the boat operators do not know what to do with us. Our group was composed of joiners coming from different groups where with me was my best friend Teresa Corpuz, my long time travel buddy. The boatmen just dropped us to cottage in Alibijaban and has no plans to tour us around for an island hopping the whole day. We were trapped there idle overnight.
Since we had nothing to do from the morning till evening, I toured around the island and had some interaction with the locals. No wonder, that there are two elementary schools in the island since as per 2015 National Census, it has a population of 1,643. Alibijaban as an island is barangay in itself, considered the smallest of seven barangays of San Andres.
I was alone in touring around the island. Fortunately, there is a network signal in the signal to get in touch from the rest of the world. As i walked further in the island, I discovered that there are white sand beaches and mangrove forests.
However, I witnessed more beauty of its mangrove protected area the following day after having our island hopping in Burias islands, namely: Animasola, Tinalisayan and Sombrero. This part of the island is quite far from our cottage and we boarded a boat to get there. The following pictures can tell more of what I have seen and experienced.
To view about the whole tour package, this is the link Burias Group of Islands Tour Package.
HOW TO GO THERE:
Take a bus from Cubao or Pasay for a Lucena City route. From Lucena's Grand Terminal, take a van or jeepney to San Andres (Quezon). From the San Andres Port Terminal, seek the assistance of the local tourism office for boat arrangement going to Alibijaban Island.
