The island begins to entice the visitor with its landscape framed by palm trees. Then it unfolds itself little by little until the visitor falls in love and asks himself: What if? He begins to entertain the idea in his mind that perhaps he could have this dream 365 nights a year. He dismisses it at first, thinking he has a real life back in the city where he has a high-paying job, two cars and a vibrant nightlife he enjoys with his friends (when they find an empty slot in their Palms), but the thought persists. After a few more trips to the island he is continuing this dream in his waking hours. He is making plans in his mind: What if he did quit his job and life in the city, and came to live and work in Boracay? There comes a point when the idea doesn’t seem so silly anymore and that’s when he takes the boat from Caticlan to a new life.
Boracay was a different island when each of its residents first lived here. Some made the move twenty-five years ago, ten years, eight years or six years. Some saw their first Boracay sunset on a completely deserted beach – no resorts or backpackers, not even commercial boats to take you to the island – "and you could walk the entire island without seeing a soul." Some discovered it when it was already a whispered secret among backpackers who brought back stories of gathering on the shore to watch a million bats fly around, where the night was lit by fireflies and perfumed by flowers, and they would cook turtle eggs from Cagban and "magic mushroom" on the beach with cold beer in hand, the ice coming from kerosene refrigerators. Some dropped anchor when the island was at its tourism peak or a few years later when it was reeling from the economic crisis.
Their reasons for staying are varied, but all of them found what they had been looking for. It was a place for second wind for those who had lived in the world’s best cities and grown weary of them; a place to start for those who were just beginning to live life out of school; a place for good business; a place of "fabulous women"; a place to find one’s self, which was somehow lost in the previous lifestyle; a place where one could belong in a community; a place for spiritual awakening.
The cliché that it is the people that make a place special is perhaps truer in Boracay than any other place in the country. Here, numerous ethnicities have come together for decades and have produced a unique culture that is at once international and local. Foreigners are Filipinized and vice versa. "There is a subculture here, an undercurrent," says Patrick Higgs, owner of Club Bazzura, one of the island’s popular clubs. "Every foreigner has to take off the hat and coat which he wore in his country and leave it there. You have to accept where you live." And Boracay, for all its incredible beauty and imperfections, is a dream come true. "Fifty-two weeks a year other people want to live here. They get one week. I get it all year round, I’m very lucky."
Inter-marriage between foreigners and Filipinos has produced a generation of children belonging to what some people term the "fourth-generation" Boracaynons. (The first being the Atis; second, the first wave of Filipino immigrants who came from Aklan and other provinces; the third, the original European backpackers, hippies, and people from the mainland looking for work; and fourth, their children.) Children of inter-marriages are sometimes called "Mix-Mix" or more specifically tagged with one parent’s nationality, for example Mestiza-French, Mestiza-Italian, Mestiza-Swiss, Mestiza-German, etc. They straddle two cultures and make up a third one as they go along.
The environment is one topic for which Boracay residents allow themselves to become very political.
On his first trip to Boracay, Patrick Higgs took a walk on the beach and found an old man who had just taken his wakeup swim sitting on a tree trunk that washed ashore. The old man greeted him in Filipino and asked, "English?" Patrick said yes and sat beside him. It was five o’clock in the morning, the birds and the fish were beginning to stir. And as the two men watched the sun rising, the old man, who had witnessed this scene countless times, said quietly, "Look, she is waking up."
Patrick was struck by the profundity of the statement. She is waking up. "This is not just a God-given right to us, it is ours to protect. It’s not for God to protect, it’s for us, and God is our salvation if we do it right."
Louie Cruz, author of the famous lifestyle column "Off Shoulder" in The Manila Chronicle, has been living in Boracay for six years. He had been visiting since 1972 when he would fly with friends on small planes to the island. "Back then, the only television we had was the horizon and we would watch the lightning in the skies. In the mornings, we all burned our backs because the sand was so white, the sun would bounce back. The coconut trees were so close to each other that sunlight couldn’t get through – all those tall trees bending at an angle, looking for the sun, I miss that."
Nadine Rosaia, an Italian-American from California, first came to Boracay in 1992 and stayed for two months. "It was an island cut off from the rest of the world, yet it had the best disco in the world, the Beachcomber." Four years later, she decided to live in Boracay and open Stables Real Coffee and Tea Café. She looks at the changes in Boracay with optimism. "People are now more interested in beautifying the island and improving the facilities. Tourism has brought higher education and children are growing up having more opportunities compared to twenty years ago." Yes, she does miss the old Boracay but "you can’t be a Robinson Crusoe forever."
Frenchman Roger Deparis came to Boracay when there were just 10 beach huts to rent and a handful of locals to talk to. "We were broke and they were broke, but that didn’t matter." Twenty-two years later, it’s a changed island he lives on but he still enjoys the sunset. "That’s one of the good things humans cannot spoil, the sunset."
Roger decided to stay on his second trip to "Magic Island" in the late Seventies. Prior to that he was in the petroleum business and had also established restaurants in Africa, Canada and France and in 1980, he started one in Boracay. He married Melani, a Filipino from Ilocos Norte, and had a daughter they named Marie France or Maffi. "We had no electricity until 1994 and foreign tourists loved it. We didn’t pay for water, electricity or taxes. That was paradise."
"Every day is like a Sunday" is how Louise Ravelo puts it.
"Every night is a Saturday night" is how Patrick Higgs lives it.
Such is the lifestyle that people "who wear shoes on the beach are considered stuck-up," says Louie Cruz, who’s no longer used to walking on paved roads that it "feels funny" when he does. "My feet are looking for something to sink in." So used are the islanders to flip-flops that when Roger Deparis goes to the French
Embassy or the Immigration Department in Manila, he wears the one pair of shoes that he’s had for 10 years and when his wife Lani has to put on a pair, she gets calluses.
The island allows people not just to take off their designer suits, but to "take off their masks" as well and forget how important or unimportant they are in the grand scheme of things. Politicians, rich kids, artists, CEOs, students, showbiz people, hippies, models, wage earners – everybody has one goal that cuts across
economic and social lines: to have a good time.
It was certainly what Louise had in mind when she vacationed in the Philippines after graduating from San Francisco State University and before getting started on her career "because once you join the workforce, you’re trapped. I had seen it happen to my friends."
"The first time I saw the place, I was, ‘My God, this is it. This is where I want to be.’ It grew each day. I think everyone gets that kind of high the first time they get here, especially back in 1993 when it was such a perfect, idyllic paradise. I came during the low season, so there was a lot more contact with the local people and I found them so accommodating and charming – especially for me because I had been living in the States since I was 12."
After three more visits, she was sure: She didn’t want to go back to the US. Her parents, understandably shocked and upset, said: We didn’t send you to school so you could live on an island! Louise explains, "I didn’t want to wait until I was 60 to have time for life, which for me is a little bit of work, friends and family, and leisure – there’s more of the leisure part here but there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?"
She took diving lessons and found her passion and a livelihood. "People living here, they would take you under their wing." She spent her first years teaching scuba diving and every low season she would go back to San Francisco to find part-time jobs to support her life on the island. Later on, she met Jude Lee and they opened a bar. "A typical story. Boy meets girl, they fall in love and live on an island."
In a place like Boracay, the connection between nature and man is so strong that "people who were not spiritual became very contemplative because they were so close to nature." Roger points out, "People who are neither close to nature nor contemplative cannot stand living on an island."
An oft-repeated question by city folks is "Don’t you get bored sometimes?" It’s a valid question. After all, the island has no movie house and until recently it had no cable TV, it has no fast-food drive-through, no mega malls, no coliseums – things that have come to typify most people’s lives. It has only one radio station that you can "hear a complete song even when you’re walking from one place to another because everybody’s tuned to it."
Islanders find this question laughable. They say they’ve become more active participants in life here than when they were living in urban centers.
"In Manila, I was bored," says Louie Cruz. "It’s not the population of the place, it’s the environment. Here, all my six senses are stimulated."
Louie Cruz, who had led a life of parties covering the lifestyle and society beat in Manila, surprised himself and his friends when he decided to move to Boracay. He had always thought of himself as growing old in a bustling metropolis after having lived in Berlin, Cologne, Munich and Frankfurt for 25 years, and also in London, New York, Amsterdam and Cairo.
When his mother died, Louie returned to the Philippines permanently to take care of his father, Ambassador JV Cruz. "Boracay eased the pain whenever I came here for a visit."
When his father passed away, Louie came to a decision: He was going to quit Manila. His choices were Boracay, Cebu, Angeles City or Baguio. He was looking for "zero stress" and Boracay won. "I’m here for the lifestyle, not the sand or the sea – I love the sea but I could stay here for a year straight and swim only twice. In Boracay time seems to move slower. I’m able to stretch a day, I have the time to sit down and talk with friends, read a book, listen to music. I don’t waste two hours stuck in traffic. I’m 53. At a certain point, you have to prepare for death. In doing that, there must be a spiritual awakening and Boracay hastened that process. I was able to accomplish peace of mind because of the environment." In the same breath, he says that Boracay is filled with temptation – not unlike in the biblical paradise – with beautiful people coming and going, seemingly leaving their inhibitions at home.
He finds it funny that living on a seven-kilometer-long island has given him more friends than living in a city of 10 million people where "you tend to orbit in the same circle."
The couple had been to beautiful beaches around Asia, but it was only tropical Boracay, which they felt was like home. Daniel explains, "Boracay is a world-class beach but that’s not why we decided to make it our second home. Home should be where you feel at home, it has nothing to do with palm trees and white sand. For us, it had a lot to do with foreigners being accepted and liked here. Also, Filipinos and Europeans are culturally and historically and even in faith related to each other."
Being able to talk with people and being understood by them made it all the more easy to establish a life in Boracay, which they did in 1995 when daughter Zoé, now eight years old, was born. "In other Asian islands, when the locals laugh at your joke, they’re probably being polite; in Boracay, they laugh because they get it."
Daniel is an honorary consul of the Philippines to Switzerland. He says raising their children in a multi-cultural environment was something they had planned on "because we thought it was important." He adds, "We have to come up with a new generation that is more tolerant, open to different cultures, customs, colors and religions." Zoé and her six-year-old brother Noah commute between Switzerland and Boracay, avoiding the Swiss winter and spending a term at the Boracay International School. In the kids’ Swiss school, there are about 40 nationalities; in Boracay there are 20.
A year after Daniel built his house in Boracay, he established the PhilKids Foundation, which sends to college the top three honor students of the local high school. "Either you feel responsible for your community or you don’t. The scholarship program was our reaction to the poverty. We didn’t want to invest money in supporting people on a daily basis or treating them like beggars, we wanted to concentrate on the future of the community, which is education." The PhilKids Foundation has graduated teachers, an accountant, and soon, three lawyers. Daniel laughs: "We’ll have more lawyers than doctors!"
"What’s nice about the peak season is that it doesn’t last forever; you know it’s going to end and you can relax eventually," says Louise Ravelo. "During low season, there’s a lot more local interaction, that’s when we bond again, have dinner at each other’s house."
Patrick Higgs, who was "trying to get away from running nightclubs in London and ended up running a nightclub in Boracay," says, "I like the fact that we’re family – myself and all the other business owners that I know. I can walk up or down the beach and everybody says hello. If they have problems, maybe I know somebody who can help. You’re all social workers. It’s benefiting for your own soul." He likens living on the island to living in a village, just like the one he grew up in outside London where everyone knew everyone’s children.
Patrick has lived in Jamaica and Ibiza, and traveled through the Caribbean, the Americas and Africa, and Boracay since 1996. "In the beginning, you’re all enamored and you don’t understand the culture, the way of life, so you make mistakes. But if you’re prepared to sit down and talk with the local people and learn from them, they’re always willing to show you. Everything is based on respect, from crossing someone’s land to greeting people. In return, they will help you."
Nadine Rosaia is everybody’s favorite island girl. A lapidarist or stone dealer, she travels all over the world selling stones half the year, and from six to eight months she’s on the island selling coffee, tea and pastries. She’s come to understand the rule of thumb in island life: "If you respect the people, their culture and traditions, and still be yourself, then you’re okay."
Living on an island is not as perfect as one might think. Says another resident, "Your first impression is always the wrong one, sadly, because you arrive here as a tourist and you don’t see the flaws in the system, the cracks in the walls. You just ignore them. You have a rose-tinted picture of what the island is really like. Being a tourist and an islander are two different things."
Like any tourist destination in Asia, the economic downturn and terrorist activities in the region have thinned the crowds that used to come all year round. Business establishments are feeling the pinch. But that’s island life for you: "Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down, and sometimes it rains," reflects Patrick.
Canadian John Munroe, who came to Boracay 17 years ago as a 21-year-old backpacker, opened one of the first bars here, Cocomangas. His business has experienced the best of Boracay’s times and the worst. But like the print on the Shooters Challenge T-shirt that they give away to people who down fifteen straight drinks, Cocomangas is still standing.
When John first came to Boracay, he gave himself one weekend to enjoy the beach. He kept extending his stay. Then he met a Filipina and married her, and he opened the bar. Now divorced and married again, he says Boracay is his home and it will survive any crisis.
Another longtime resident is Moritz Bertschi, owner of Mango Ray restaurant and hotel. He came to the Philippines as a photographer for Mango Press to cover the ati-atihan festival in Kalibo, having traveled previously throughout South America and Asia.
"It was a virgin island and this was only 1983," he says. "I stayed for two days, liked it very much and decided to get a piece of land, whether for business or holiday I didn’t know."
With his Filipino wife, he opened Mango Ray, a landmark establishment with its yellow and red flags, and faux yellow and green mangoes on the roof of the restaurant. "Some people like the mountains, I love the sea and go swimming every day." He also loves soccer. An island story goes that when an Australian TV crew came to film Mango Ray at the same time that the World Cup final between Brazil and Germany was being shown on TV...well, you can guess what this German restaurateur chose to focus his attention on.
When the habagat comes, some residents decide to leave the island, some sit it out on their deck chairs sipping their frozen drinks. They all say that Boracay when it rains is another experience one ought to have.
"It’s quiet, very quiet, but very nice," says Patrick.
"It becomes even more beautiful," says Louie.
The rain embraces the entire island the way the sun does during the summer. When it’s over, it’s an island renewed, and everybody looks forward to another season.