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Why not hire a boat for a day and explore Laguna de Bay?

It is easy to find a fisherman who will tour you around the lake. How much you will pay him depends on your bargaining skills… You can ask the boatman to bring you to one of the many houses/cottages that are built on the lake. There is a cottage near each fishpond. Most caretakers will be happy to have some company. (It might be nice to give them a little something when you leave the cottage. Those guys are earning less than 2,000 pesos a month…)

You can stay on one of those cottages for a few hours. Make sure you bring your own baon (food) & drinks. If you like fishing you can try your luck. Don’t be surprised if you bring back a full basket of fishes back home. There are a lot of fishes in the lake.

Bangus (milkfish), tilapia and mamali (big head) are mostly raised in the fishponds. Ayungin, kanduli, hipon (shrimp) and biya are swimming in the open.

The sight of all those bamboo sticks everywhere in the water is a very eerie sight. It is extraordinary beautiful and peaceful place. From where I was I could see the Makati skyline in the distance. The big city was looming nearby but at the same time I had the feeling I was somewhere in the province.

Don’t forget to bring sun cream, a hat and sunglasses.

Named after Ba-é, a town on its southern shore, Laguna de Ba-é is a salty lake, with a depth of two meters. Fed by rivers and streams from the Sierra Madre, it empties into Manila Bay through the Pasig River. It was in the town of Ba-é on the lake’s southern shore that the Augustinians, established their first Christian mission station in Laguna, in 1571. Hence, the lake’s name.

American cartographers misread the name “Ba-é”, leading to the cartographic error of some contemporary map: a lake that is a bay. By definition, a bay is a body of water, usually salty; with a large opening making it an ideal harbour while a lake, usually fresh, is encircled by land.

The heart-shaped lake, Laguna de Ba-é, is encircled by two provinces, Rizal and Laguna, and Metro Manila. To the east is the Sierra Madre, to the south are the volcanic mountains–Banahaw (2,177 mts), San Cristobal (1,470 mts), Makiling (1,090 mts), Atimba (654 mts), and Nagcarlang (629 mts)–and to the northwest the plains of Metro Manila.

Laguna de Bay got three bays: The West Bay, Central Bay and East Bay that converge towards the South carving out what resembles a large bird or dinosaur. The West and Central Bays are separated by Talim Island, the largest and most populated of the nine islands within the lake.

Varied opinions have been advanced by early geologists regarding the origin of Laguna de Bay. The most generally accepted theory, however, based on recent findings, is that the basin was once part of Manila Bay.

The lake also serves as a huge waste sink for solid and liquid waste coming from households, cropland areas, industries, livestock and poultry
production as well as fishery activities. Because not a single municipality is equipped with a sewerage system, pollution are carried through surface
run-off to all the 21 tributary rivers into the lake. In addition, polluted waters from the Marikina and Pasig Rivers also flow into the lake.

At present, the lake’s most dominant use is fisheries. It is estimated that the lake has a potential yield of approximately 80,000-90,000 MT of fish annually both from the fish pens and open fisheries.

The boom in the lake fishery production has led to continuing conflict in the region. The large scale fish pen culture has threatened the economic conditions of fishermen dependent upon open water catch. Because investment in fish pen culture requires considerable amount of capitalization, the marginal fishermen could not afford to establish their own fish pens. Traditional fishermen are battling for fishing grounds in the open water and this has been a major social conflict since the early eighties. The clamour now of the small fishermen is the dismantling of big fish pen owned by corporations, the owners of which are politicians, retired military personnel and other influential persons with strong connections to the government. Fishermen associations are pushing for the proper allocation of the allowable area to include fishermen cooperatives.

Where: Laguna de Bay. There are many possibilities to hire a boatman.

My rating: 10/10. Extraordinary experience. Close to Manila. I discovered another world out there.

Source: My Sarisari Store, Bahandi, Wikipedia, Laguna de Bay Masterplan, Living lakes

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 24th, 2006 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Laguna, Road Trip, Travel Destinations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.