Life in a Northern Town
Part One: Surf Town
by rick olivares
Thursday, September 5, 2013
San Juan,
La Union
There’s a sense of great anticipation that has been
building for over a week since this trip was planned. And it has been about
five months in the making. A wave of excitement engulfed my body the moment we
entered Surf Town in Urbiztondo, San Juan, La Union.
I see the longboards propped up against the wall.
From the distance, I can see a few surfers lounging about the calm waters as
there are no waves for them to ride.
A couple of bronzed sea urchins run towards me.
“Ankle! Ankle!,” they chorus. It takes me a few seconds to realize that they
were not referring to my ankle but were calling me, ‘uncle’.
“Surfing lesson,” one asks pointing to some
surfboards.
“Later or tomorrow,” I reply. “Pupunta kami kasi ng
Baguio mamaya. Pero babalik kami.”
“Yakult,” offers the second youngster who I will get
to know as ‘Mark’ later on. He fishes out a pack of Yakult from a cooler.
“Fifty pesos lang.”
Surf Town in Urbiztondo is a small patch of surf in
this once quiet seaside town in the north. When the father and son tandem of
Aussies Brian and Luke Landrigan decided to ride the waves here, it quickly
became a hot spot for tourists and surfers everywhere.
Today, Thursday, there aren’t much folks about. Fridays
and Saturdays, the place will be packed and rocking.
The original surfing school and shop used to be a
hole in the wall operation but has since mushroomed into a neighborhood of
hotels for surfers and sun worshippers.
We speak with the local surfing champion Jhay-R
Esquivel who we’re doing a short video with tomorrow and on Saturday (more on
him later). The kid is 17-years old but is carting home trophies like they can
be bought at the local sari sari store. He’s a phenom, proudly boasts one local
and I am all the more intrigued to take some surfing lessons from the kid.
During that lunch with the Esquivels, I bump into old
friend Marcus Adoro of the Eraserheads. We used to chat about La Union all the
time on Yahoo Messenger. It took over a decade for him to get me here and well,
better late than never.
He doesn’t look changed at all. I ask him how he is
and he says he’s putting up a new band. Adoro recently purchased a place of his
own here in San Juan where he stays for a week or more before going back to
Manila.
We promise to come back on Friday as we’re headed
towards Baguio and Benguet.
We clasp hands and bid our goodbyes.
It’s time to go up to the City of Pines (until SM,
the so-called good guys made a mess of nature) where we’re doing a video and a
story on Team Lakay, that legendary Mixed Martial Arts outfit that has produced
so many local and international champions.
That wave of excitement engulfs me again.
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