Surviving Zambales: Anawangin

It has been two weeks since my Zambales trip, and I’m only blogging about it now. It’s really more because of my lousy internet connection (at home, at my office, at my dorm room) that I kept pushing this back. I was scared at first because my closest friends at work didn’t come. You know how I tend to be anti-social, right? But I still had a lot of fun and I think I wasn’t that awkward during the entire trip. My Zambales trip was really something I will never forget because of so many reasons:

1. It was my first company outing;
2. The trip was really a test of endurance and not a company outing;
3. Zambales is just so beautiful.

We went to Pundakit on May 16. We didn’t stay there for long, though. The beach was really pretty. It was still early but the sun’s beating down on us already. After dropping off our luggage, we immediately rode the boat to Anawangin island. If Pundakit was beautiful, Anawangin was just breath-taking. I kind of wish I’m exaggerating. I have no photo to prove my point, though. There’s a river inside the island and even the scene there was gorgeous.

However, we didn’t go to Anawangin just to swim and have fun. We went there for our company’s team building. We even had small teams! Kimpee designed the cool banners. How anyone can exert so much effort is beyond me. Most of our games were a little silly, though! Some were even on-the-spot but there were two games that really pushed us to be competitive. Me, anyway.

The water games were the improvised ones. I think our boss saw us swimming with our vests on and thought, “Hey, why don’t we have a tsinelas relay?” Yep, that’s what happened. That’s me trying to be competitive. (Photo c/o of Kuya Francis)

I definitely enjoyed the matchstick games. I don’t know, I guess I just like mind games? But it really forced us to keep our heads together! We easily got the first and second puzzles but the third one’s a bitch. Seriously. It was that easy and yet we had a hard time figuring it out! Oh well, the important thing was we solved it. (Last photo c/o of Ate Carol)

One of the silly games was the Bato-Bato-Pik match off. We had to cross the river then meet a member of the opposing team in the middle. That’s where we played the bato-bato-pik. But I was the designated photographer for the game so I didn’t participate.

For one of the games, we had to run across this bamboo bridge! It was quite terrifying because it sure it didn’t look (and feel!) stable. Good thing that if ever we’d fall, we’d only be falling in a pretty shallow river. I think the running across the bridge was just another improvised rule of the game.

The river also dried on mid-afternoon. It was still pretty scenic, and the sand looked like snow. It’s just so pretty. Also, the sand in Anawangin is vulcanic ash so I’m not even sure if I should be calling it sand at all.

We were pretty beat up by the end of the day. But a group photo is always mandatory.

We had to go back to Pundakit quite early (3PM) since it will be dangerous once the waves get bigger. We were so tired that we all fell asleep on the way back. Immediately after going back to the island, we took a bath and slept again. We were that tired that we had no time to do other things. We woke up for dinner, though! We had a little bonfire and beauty pageant after dinner. I’m sorry for the lack of photos of the bonfire. I was too lazy and tired that night already. I also don’t like low-light photography. Heh.

I promise to post the part two of my Zambales trip (also known as the day I died again and again) some time next week. The photos take forever to load!