Three days is too long when you’re in a bad company, but too short when you are enjoying yourself. On our final day in La Union, we just savored our last moments with food and enjoying the waters.
I got up early on our last day (as I did the day prior) to again do one of my favorite things on the beach—run! As always, I was running barefoot so I had to start somewhere where there were no pointed rocks. My younger self would have gone crazy with the amount of beach that you can run in San Juan, La Union as it just goes on for kilometers! But as I have not been really running long distances for a while now, a modest 5K would be more than enough to satisfy by craving as a runner.
The good thing about the beaches of San Juan, aside from the length, was that you have a lot of interesting things to see along the way, including the Mebuyan’s Vessel. The beach was also very wide and there were hardly any people in certain section in the morning. The challenge though was that the inclination of the beach was a bit steep in some areas and that the sand can be quite loose in many places making it quite tiring to run onto. And there were the occasional strong waves that can give you an early morning splash! But overall, this was one of the most pleasant beaches to run onto amongst all that I have visited.
And as they say, never skip breakfast. So we went to El Union Coffee for some food and I got their French Toast Camo.
For the remainder of our stay, we just stayed on the beach to our heart’s content. It was also nice to watch surfers, both those having their lessons and experts, do their thing with the waves.
That trip to “Elyu” really went much more than I had expected. If you read about them based on hotel booking sites, you may be discouraged as a lot of hotels have negative reviews, particularly as a solo or couple traveler as they seem to cater mostly to groups. But it turns out that there are so many more accommodations there catering to various group sizes and budget that you can just commute to San Juan without any prior bookings and you’d have a good chance of finding one that suits you, assuming it’s not the peak season of course. Worst case scenario that it’s fully booked everywhere, you can easily catch a bus back to Metro Manila, or go to Baguio as an alternative. And their huge selection of food places was just unbelievable. Three days was all it took for me to turn from being a stranger to a lover of La Union. I hope to be back soon!
Elyu Chronicles
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