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The Beach behind a Garden behind a House called Amarela
"No wonder! You have your shades on," I scolded myself as I took off my sunglasses. I was standing at Libaong Beach, the four kilometer stretch of white sand at Bohol's Panglao Island, one of the island's longest beach strips and wondering why the scenery looked somewhat gray. Apparently, in my haste to see the beach upon checking in at Amarela Resort, I had forgotten to remove my sunglasses. As soon as I noted my little mistake though, and had finally exposed my eyes naked to the high noon heat, every detail blazed golden before me, and the sands burned white yet remained cool, feeling soft like warm powdery milk, the grains swarming between my toes and coating my feet. I looked around me and back up at the house at the cliff I came from. Even at that distance, all the way from the beach, Amarela looked homey – yellow and happy under the summer sun and braced by bougainvillea branches abloom in pink and red. I raced back up to Amarela, this time seeing how the sands of the beach merged with the stony steps of the garden path. The greenery that was a blur to me in my initial haste to get to the beach was apparently a garden of coconut trees and more bougainvillea bushes on the slopes of a hill. Later in my stay at Amarela, I would learn that the garden which links Amarela to the beach also grows the vegetables and fruits served to guests like me. I would also learn that somewhere in the garden is a bed of reeds and bamboo that cleanses the water coming from Amarela, to be seeped by the grounds of the garden and kept away from merging with the pure sea. There seemed to be just a little bit too much lushness in all of it which I could not immediately make sense of. I haven't even tested the waters yet, nor drifted off in my suite. In the meantime, I dug into the homegrown house salad and shrimp and mango curry that awaited me at the resort's open-air dining hall, which looked like anything but resort-like. Amarela is simply a great big country house, hid behind plain gates, twenty five minutes from Tagbilaran Airport, and is painted yellow. Or so I thought. A great big house with the sea at its backyard. I munched on the crunchy greens and purples of my salad and chewed on the curry-cured shrimps as I looked around the hall. Almost all furniture was wooden, with detailed carvings and smooth curves. Some doors appeared extra aged, as if they were lifted from other houses and made to fit the passages of Amarela. All other signs of modernity with given a rusty touch – metal bars in the ceilings are clothed with woven rattan while the concrete pavement in nearby verandas and pathways bear the imprints of leaves and shells from the garden and beach. Very soon, I saw the master of the house, Atty. Lucas Nunag, who took a seat next to me. Another quaint fact, I thought. A resort which appears like a house is kept by a man of the law. I turned off my beholding for a while, got right down to business, and bombarded the lawyer with my questions. And boy, did I have a lot of them! My most nagging query was why Amarela seems to have been designed like a house. Or was it perhaps originally a house, or an ancestral house, transformed into a resort? Atty. Nunag answered that he and his wife, who is also a lawyer, actually set out to simply build a house on that portion of hilly land by the beach. The Nunags bought the property in 2000 because they wanted a peaceful hideaway to retire to, a place of relief from city life. In a funny twist of fate, the lawyers were confronted by a law as they laid down the plans to build. The law prohibited them from building a mere house because the land they acquired was part of a prime tourist area, Libaong beach being one of the longest stretches of white sand beaches surrounding Panglao Island. With the aid of friends and his own artistic children, Atty. Nunag made the most of obeying what the law dictated. He had the main building of Amarela constructed, the very place we were at, in the fashion of an old country villa. He arranged that it be colored yellow, reminiscent of the street colors he saw and loved on his trips to Lisbon, Portugal. He decked the inside with Boholano crafts, paintings and furniture salvaged from demolished Bohol ancestral homes. That way, he explained, Amarela stands different from the rest of Bohol resorts, being the only one which actually honors Boholano culture, and being a sample of a Boholano home at its finest. Amarela even sets the bar higher for all the rest of the Panglao Island and Bohol resorts, Atty. Nunag pointed out. Amarela is a trailblazer in environmental design and landscaping. Its wide and airy halls allow natural light to flood in for most of the day. Energy efficient bulbs, framed by second hand woodwork, are powered by solar panels nestled on Amarela's roofs. Smoking is discouraged among guests while local laws actually ban the lighting of bonfires, all in effort to reduce carbon emissions and to prevent pollution. Even the planting of organic vegetables and fruits in the garden is done not only for purposes of being health conscious, but also to cut down on the transportation of goods to save fuel. And the reeds and the bamboo structure somewhere in the garden is Amarela's own waste water treatment system. Also, should feel sporty, the lawyer said I could kayak, for kayaking is what Amarela offers instead of jet skiing. Atty. Nunag explained that since Panglao is surrounded by waters teeming with marine life, activities that could disrupt the ecosystem are prohibited on the island and on its waters. All the rest of my queries were ably answered by the lawyer. All of a sudden, everything I found curious about Amarela became unique. At its premier suite, the Amarela Suite, even the bed suddenly made special sense – its antique wood spoke of Boholano history, its being built without a single nail meant it is ergonomic. Instead of being draped with the usual classy silk, a white crocheted blanket is laid on top of it – and who would not be reminded of images of mothers or grannies crocheting while rocking on a chair, upon seeing such a dainty thing? Actually, rocking chairs are placed in certain nooks and crannies of Amarela, along with quaint house items like antique, yet functional sewing machines, small wooden religious figurines, or old round local guitars called bandurias. And what home would not be complete without a piece of garden? Because Amarela is a grand home, it is not surprising that its garden would be almost forest-like. And more than being like a forest, it is a garden that stretches beyond the white beach. In Atty. Nunag's words, the sea before their beach, when seen from below through snorkeling or diving, is "like a Bermuda garden". It is a sanctuary for fishes and corals, the site of underwater caves, and at dawn, the playground of dolphins. I carried those revelations with me whenever I ran on Amarela's beach and waded through its blue waters during the rest of my stay. So, the sea surrounding me is a sunken Eden, and the purity of the beach's sands is proof that I can keep my place in the garden if I abide by the earth's own house rules, as the Nunags and the rest of the Boholanos do. "So this is the Mindanao sea," I muttered while neck-deep in the waters during one of my early morning swims. I looked around – right in front and not so far away was Pamilacan Island. Left of that and farther off was Camiguin Island, home to the famous Hibok-Hibok volcano. To the right of Pamilacan was the island of Siquijor. And all of these seemed just within reach, neighbors of the fair Amarela. It's good for a house to have neighbors, after all. And I had no more questions. |
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