By Gerry Garcia

Alaminos Mayor Hernani Braganza and company must be going great guns to develop the Hundred Islands Park to the outmost if   it’s true, as he says, he noted an increase in tourist influx to the islands as evidenced by P600,000 earned from entry tickets  all a result of building new infrastructure projects and improving basic services after hardly a year following the park’s turn-over to the Alaminos government. This is amazing, Nani!    Compared to its situation when the HI park was still in the hands of the Philippine Tourism Authority a year ago, your park today must be a super-luminous pearl chalking up an approval rate of 15.13 percent among online voters and coming out third, out of 20 nominees, in the online survey conducted by the Asia Pacific Management Forum for Best place in Asia! All in a year’s work. * * * We’ve not been to the Hundred Islands yet since our last visit about two years ago. What we then  saw there was at least as impressive as what we presently see at Dagupan City’s Tondaligan Park. But it seemed our Tondaligan Park attracted more visitors including a spattering of foreigners, than the Lucap Park, especially during weekends. 

In Eva Visperas’ story in last Sunday’s Punch issue, however, about 10 percent of tourist influx to Alaminos Hundred Islands today is foreigners. * * * Among the  crowd-drawing  improvements made on the Alaminos HI Park are: provision of more clean, non-smelling comfort rooms or kasilyas); putting up wooden foot bridges at Quezon Island connecting it with adjacent islands; putting up more picnic huts and tables; also available are overnight cottages, including opportunities for adventure seekers, like jet-skiing, para-sailing, kayak-rowing and snorkeling. Mayor Braganza, super entrepreneur, has launched an all-out drive to make HI magnificent and more magnetic than  Boracay. He even received offers from Japanese and British developers to set up a solar power in Quezon Island even reaching out to his fellow-Alaminians abroad asking them to give cash or kind in promotion of the 100 Islands. 

The three major islands in the Park that have so far been developed are the Quezon , Governor’s, and Children’s. And they are drawing more visitors and tourists than flies. Gone are days when owners of motorized launches destined for the different islands used to twirl their thumbs waiting and waiting for passengers.

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