REAL as real can be

It was the word “Pacific” that sent me hoisting a backpack to tag along with photographer Yvette Lee. Pacific meant the ocean and big waves; calm lagoons have never been my cup of tea.

We ended up in Real, on a cove that magically appeared along a craggy shore. Before our two-day trip ended, I had signed up for a residential resort development. A year later, I lost hard-earned money to Mother Nature, which sent a mountain of rocks and mud sweeping into Real, in Quezon province, to the southeast of Manila.

These days the cove is back though there’s no recovering my money. But whatever boasting rights lost, and however much it pains to admit I won’t have a retirement beach house, the upside to tragedy is, that Real remains a natural wonder bereft of artifice – though ‘tis true that one man’s paradise is another man’s hell.

Real…