Unravelling The Giant Pieces Of The Philippine Puzzle

A dreamy active holiday awaits you in Kappalady, a kitesurfing village in Sri Lanka with newfound eco-luxury; Explore the many national parks and rice marine life of the Philippines.

- Caris Crus

Its archipelagic structure has always been a marvel within the Pacific blue—a string of islands forming a silhouette of what could be a baby extending its hands, trying to unfurl his legs for the first step. The many island cluster, more than 7,000 of them, forms a piece of a puzzle that doesn’t seem to lock, at least visually, with the jagged edges of the Asian continent. Whether Pangea chose to let chunks of geographical wonders adrift, or let them rise from the trenches deep, one will never know. But the country’s current formation, a fragment of a gargantuan past, stirs a global desire for discoveries, thanks to many unexplored islands that look like speckles from man’s map.

Lingayen Gulf, a tranquil body of bright azure waters, beautifully frames the Ilokano province of Pangasinan and blessed it with a collection of green-topped dollops floating over the shore. This is the Hundred Islands National Park, a name that causes either a fascination or a frown--surely, Mother Nature wouldn’t sprinkle ten tens of islands in a single area. This might come as a surprise: she didn’t. In fact, she blessed it with 123. 124, during low tide.

The locals call them kapulo-pulo— small, mushroom-shaped lands gorgeously smothered with lush vegetation around its shapely head. Underneath it, a craggy limestone base, whose foundations may have eroded during millennia of rippling tides as not all of them had names.