Ironwulf.net: En Route – The Philippines, Travel, Photography Blog

For me who constantly go on the road or fly off to a destination somewhere, I always try to make sure I’ll have a reliable way to connect online since a big part of my work involves the internet. My usual mobile office activities are monitoring my own server where my blogs are hosted, updating them, my run on my favourite social networking sites like facebook and twitter and sometimes random image submissions on requested stock photos for some publications. I have been reliant on location wifi hotspots and most especially to my mobile broadband connection, so when Smart invited me with a few other bloggers to experience their new Smart Evolution LTE Mobile Broadband technology in Boracay, I was excited, since anything that’ll make my time more productive is always welcome.

“I’ve lived on the Island my whole life” said Gaga. Despite the name, he’s a male somewhere in his early to mid-twenties, a little over 5 feet in height and his tropical brown island skin along his chubby constructions is adorned with tattoos. We stumbled upon him that evening when my writer companion was looking for a place to get a real tattoo. Jay, one of the members of the comedy act of SPIT who’s knowledgeable with tattoos was there to help her out and found Gaga’s tattoo stall to be more competent among the line of tattoo stalls along Boracay Beach.

This is the final part of my “Boracay with Bloggers” series. Tells just how slow I am updating this blog, since I’m preparing a lot of stuff lately. This will be a short one capping off what has been a really fun getaway with other bloggers. On our last day, I didn’t wake up as early as I did before. I slept like a cat on those bed, but instead woke up around 6am. The morning light was peering into our room curtain, promising what might be a sunny day. I left half an hour later with both my roomies still drifting in la la land. To my surprise, I saw Enrico already shooting outside. Wow! You could really tell if one is really passionate about photography if one wakes up really early with the sun.

When I heard the night before that there’s gonna be an Ati-atihan Festival on our last day of stay on the island, I got excited and really hoped that the weather would clear up tomorrow. I never really got to shoot that much festivals so I was looking forward to this. And it’s not often I get to witness a festival by the beach. That morning, as if the Gods and the Saints were listening to the people, we finally got clear blue skies and sunny weather. Amen to that!

I woke up as early as 4:30am and I was really hungry (do you see a pattern here?). Anyways I’m really used to waking up real early when I travel, that’s to capture what we photographers call “The Golden Hours”. Since I don’t have any snacks with me at the room, I went down to the lobby to check if there’s anything I could buy or eat. Sadly, according to the receptionist at that time, there’s nothing open and they don’t have any snacks to sell. Too bad. They should have a mini bar there or something. I went to the lounge to see what I could find and surprisingly, I found Gail already working with some CSS codes! Wow! Turns out she really works early morning.

Day 1 of the Travel and Photo bloggers excursion to Boracay started very early. I was literally pulling myself out of bed around 3:30 in the morning just to make it for the 5am call time at the domestic airport. Only had less than a couple of hours of sleep that evening finalizing a project I’m doing. At the same time, I’m very excited for the weekend. I haven’t been to Boracay for some time and going along with fellow travelers and Photo enthusiast calls for an interesting weekend. When I got to the Terminal around 5, Karla was already there, followed by Abe, Gail with Marc, then Eugenius.

It seems an ambitious feat to bring some of the Philippine’s travel related bloggers together, but at the weekend, January 11-13 2008, around 13 bloggers gathered together in the paradise island of Boracay. This wouldn’t have been possible without Abe Olandres of Yugatech bringing us together and Microtel Inn and Seair Airlines for taking us there. It’s great to know that companies lately regard bloggers as an important part of media, thus including us in their marketing plan.