Marble Capital-Romblon, Romblon

Our next destination after Tablas Island was Romblon, the marble capital and exporter of the Philippines. We asked the tourist information office we found near the port of a shipping line about the resorts where we could stay over night. He directed us to a small and simple yet awesome resort near the poblacion. Aglicay is a sure real nice to stay with all the amenities and very accommodating people as compared to this unknown beach resort where we stayed.

We strolled around the town and came across the capitol building and the old catholic church constructed in the 16th century by the Recollect Fathers. The church was built with coral blocks and bricks.

We also went looking for marble products and other native food delicacies. It was dark when we stopped at a hotel to have our dinner.

Overlooking the poblacion from the hotel.

On our second day, we planned to enjoy swimming since we were not able to do in Tablas due to the strong waves. We were about to swim when we saw some creatures which were foreign to us. Out of curiosity again, we took some twigs and tried to budged it. We did not have the slightest idea that this was a sea cucumber locally known as "balat".

...and that this one was a brittle star. 

There were a lot of brittle stars and sea cucumber lurking on the small rocks. Instead of swimming, we were absorbed looking for other sea creatures. The white strand seen here was said to be the "laway" of the "balat".

It was very rough under the water so we need to wear our slippers. We saw a different sizes of white star fish.  There were also sea weeds under which made us jerk every time it touched our skin. There was sea cucumber hanging around a medium sized sea urchin. This really made me run to the shore line.

However, it did not stop us from looking around. We went for another direction and were really observant if we encounter again those species. We stumbled upon two big beautiful star fish, a brown and an orange. 

On our left side, we saw this and argued if it was also a starfish. Whatever it was, we were very hesitant to touch it anyway.

The dead corals accumulated on the shoreline.

Beautiful starfish.
It was here that I broke my camera after taking a lot of pictures..:(