2 Days in Zambales, Philippines

*This Post originally appeared on my old lifestyle blog Style and Chocolates, a couple of years ago. This blog post has a few modifications to the text and is being transferred here permanently.

Its' already been several months since this beach trip (ok, I lied, it's been a LOT of months since, to tell you guys the truth :o) but I'm glad I'm finally able to write and feature it here for Travel Tuesday. Zambales is a beach that's about 4 or five hours away from the capital, Manila, in the Philippines. It is also a jump off point to go island hopping to nearby islands, Anawangin Cove, which is a well known place for campers, Capones and Camara island.

What we did was to find a resort in Pundaquit, Zambales and then the next day we hired a small boat (which we call a "banca" here in the Philippines to go Island hopping.) I had previously been to Zambales back when I was in college as I had a friend whose family had a beachfront house. 

Zambales has a really long and wide beach front and it was also my first time to visit one that had gray sand! Not to be a brag or anything but most of the beaches I was used to going to all my life had white powdery sand - I mean, my country DOES have 7,107 islands! I, at first thought then (during the first Zambales trip) that gray sand would just be plain gross and dirty. I was pleasantly surprised to discover though that the sand looked gorgeous under the sun and looked even more gorgeous up close! It as all a mixture of really teeny tiny pebbles of different colors and some of those pebbles were even transparent and so it looked like the sand had crystal in them. 

The place we stayed at in this trip was situated right in front of the beach and it had the most amazing view. In the distance we could already see Capones and Camara islands (where we were going the next day) and the view looked stunning during the sunset. 

The first day was just relaxing out on the beachfront, taking one million photos of the sunset view and lots of swimming. The second day we went first to Anawangin Cove. Now, I would like to be completely honest - I'm not sure I much liked it. The main event and feature of Anawangin Cove was that it had pine trees - an awesome contrast to a tropical beach! I found that really, really cool and they look really pretty. However, it has become quite a popular place for camping (plus the day we went as a national holiday) so there were so many people and the campsite just grossed me out a little. 

There was a beachfront but again, since there were so many holiday makers, the beachfront was lined with boats so it was a bit of a hassle to swim. I couldn't wait to get out of there. 

Capones Island I found to be so beautiful. Since we had gotten out of Anawangin Cove early, we left the crowd there and got to Capones first. The sand was white, the water was clear and so amazing to swim in. There were also some cool rocks to the side with the seawater splashing against them which looked like a scene out of Little Mermaid!

I wish we could have stayed all day but the boats from Anawangin Cove started arriving so we deicided to head on to the next stop which was Camara Island. Guys, I need to be completely honest with you again and say that I did not like this island also. It was a lot smaller that Capones, and for some reason felt cramper and the waters surrounding it were murky and brackish. Plus, the surface to walk/swim over were super sharp so you had to be careful. I think we literally stayed there for ten minutes and after we went back to our beach 'hood and just frolicked and relaxed on the sand. 

It was great trip - I mean, any beach trip is always awesome! I think though, that if I were to come back I would just head on straight to Capones and stay there most of the whole day! It really was beautiful and I loved the waters!! So nice to swim in crystal clear waters on a hot, hot day. 

Have you guys been to this part in the Philippines?

All photos in this post are personal photos of nofiltertrave.blogspot.com. If you want to use them or borrow them in any way, please contact me first! My email add: celyn_lifeisashoe@yahoo.com. If you can't be bothered to send me an email and still want to use my photos, then please do credit them and link back to this blog. Thanks!