got to Baler the morning of Friday March 18th 2011 and slept for a while in Trezzo because it took 5 hours to get there. Nothing really special about the day when it started. When we all woke up we dicked around for an hour or so trying to decide what to do. Baler is a super quiet place on the weekdays. Oh and I should mention that I brought my dog Banzai up so it was exciting for me to introduce him to his new home which was bigger and cleaner than my little apartment garage in Manila. Anyhow, Mia and JB decided to go surf the beach break slop out in front of the lifeguard tower in Sabang beach and I took our caretaker to the local computer store to buy some parts for the computer we have there. While in the computer store, I get a Phone call from a friend of mine in Subic bay telling me that Japan had just had a 8.9 mid ocean earthquake and that there was a tsunami slamming into the coast of Japan as we were talking. He was verbally describing the live footage that he was watching from the police helicopter and I all the while thought he was joking or that it wasnt such a big deal.
We headed back to the resort and I received another two txts telling me about the Tsunami warning and that it was headed for the Philippines as we spoke so I turned off toward the beach to see if Mia and JB were still in the water. They were. I called them out of the water telling everyone that I passed on the way that there was a tsunami warning and that they should go home and check with their families on what to do. Mia and JB were calm and actually wanted to keep surfing because the gravity of the situation hadn't hit them yet. We went to Trezzo to check the internet where we saw crazy footage of whole cities in Japan being wrecked by the wall of water so we decided to head out before they announced it and before the traffic got crazy. Almost out of the town and the traffic got really bad. People were lined up for gas and buying food and the local store. And were about to start heading up to Ermita monument site.
Baler is not a stranger to Tsunamis. In 1735 a huge one came through and wiped out 500 families. Only 7 survived because they climbed up to where the current Ermita monument is. There is a bronze cast of 7 people climbing the side of the mountain in memory. When the warning hit on this day, everyone knew where to go. Funny, its a bit of a boy who cried wolf scenario because Baler had two Tsunami warnings last year so people are starting to get comfortable. I know of personally around 20 people who didnt heed the warnings and stayed in their houses. They would have died had the Tsunami actually hit.
So we were in the mountains of Maria Aurora where the wife of the first President of the Philippines Manual Quezon and her daughter (for which the area was named) was ambushed and killed by the Hubalahap. After meeting up with some friends who's bus had stopped in the stopover that we were sleeping in and after monitoring the situation over txt all night we decided that it was safe to head back down to Baler, dropped off the ones who wanted to sleep in Trezzo and we to Cemento to surf. It was 8am by the time we got there and we were the last to hit the lineup. Already surfing was Hiroshi Yokohama, Mako, Django, Chris Watkins and a few others. It was a good session with average 4 foot faces with an occasional 6 foot. It was kinda freaky cuz the tsunami had only hit less than 10 hours before but it was small. I kept thinking that there was gonna be another one or like an aftershock that would send a wall of water toward us and us to our deaths. What an experience.
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