Memories of Higante

February 06, 2012

Memories of Higante

Okay. I have to admit it. I wasn’t too excited about going to Isla Higante, an island just within the region. I wanted to go somewhere far but it was as if God was smiling and telling me, “Just you wait and see.”And we just came from the beautiful island of Sibuyan (that’s another story) and I thought that a “local” island would fail in comparison to the latter’s beauty.

Estancia is three hours away from Iloilo City. It’s a quiet and peaceful town found north of Panay. One of its white sand beaches, Sicogon, created a fuss then about becoming the next Boracay and a movie was even shot there.

I was with my youth group from church called the Youth Extreme. We were invited to spearhead a youth revival in Isla Higante.

Upon arriving in the town, we headed to their port and boarded a motor powered boat, colloquially known as a “pump boat”. Isla Higante was forty five minutes away and we thank God the sea was calm.

(Sorry for the pictures with faces instead of places in it. I never really thought I would be a blogger. :))

My background is the island teeming with fishing boats. Look closer and you can see their white sand beach.

Our first day with the youth! There were about 30-50 of them all. We broke up into smaller family groups and this is one of them.

Any revival would not be complete without the power of prayer of course.

Closing hours of the final day! We were blessed by their inputs during family group time and their insights on the activities we did with them.

We feel fulfilled upon completing our God given task after every revival. We couldn’t ask for more because we are just as blessed as those we seek to revive. But God just throws in a little bit extra most of the time. They decided to take us on a day tour the next day.

Yahoo! This is on our way to the first stop: The Boulevard. That’s the rocky mountain in front of us.

After a rigorous rock climbing experience, we finally reached the top!

The view from the Boulevard.

To say that the view from the top was breathtaking would be an understatement. As the Psalmist said “He covers the sky with clouds; he supplies the earth with rain and makes grass grow on the hills.”

After a while, we made our descent ever so carefully.

Fishy experience. That’s me holding a baby shark. (I think catching that is prohibited though.) Next stop, the Tangke (or the tank).

Grand rock formations on the way to the Tangke.

The group inside the Tangke. The Tangke is called as such obviously because it’s shaped like a tank, depositing water when the tide is high. The rock serving as our stage (and all the others inside the Tangke) purportedly fell during the excavating/mining expeditions done when there was news of hidden treasures in the Tangke.