WAVES,GOLD,PINEAPPLES

THREE THINGS are popular in Camarines Norte-the surf,the pineapples, and the gold.

Daet is a good eight hours or so away from Manila by land. Or you could take the 45-minute plane ride to Naga if you're in a hurry, and drive to Daet for two hours.

The pineapples are called formosa, and are smaller than your usuall Hawaian Queen Breed. But they lack in size they make up for sweetness and crispness. Just outside of Daet, in the municipality of Jose Panginaban is a cooperative center that processes pineapples into refreshing juices, tarts, pies,candies, and assortment of delicacies. Not too far is a barangay center that produces cloth made from the fiber of pineapples leaves, which appends the small community's income through the help of the local branch of the department of Trade and Industry. they also make excellent handmade paper from this fiber.

As expected, Daet celebrates the fruit via the pinyasan (June 15-24), an annual pineapple festival marked by street dancing, floats, beauty pageants, and Agri-trade fairs, just to name a few. Then there's the town of Paracale, renowned for being a frontier for golg filigrees. Said one resident: "Even at an early age, we were trained to pan for gold, because it was everywhere. You could dig a deep hole in the sides of the street and find gold. Even inside the houses, beneath the floors." Do not get the impresion, however, that Paracale resembles Ayala Alabang or Forbes Park- It remains very much a typical provincial town with a handful of goldsmith shops (same of them also deal with silver, as they had to adjust to weakenning purchasing powers) scattered here and there. They even export to Switzerland and other Europian countries.

Outside Daet, there are several places you can visits to cool off. Just in the nearby town of San Vicente is the villa Mintella Resort, where you can deep in an unbelievably sparkling clean river, with same picnic huts in the side. But if you wnat to take the road less traveled-or, better yet, the pool less swam in-you might want to rough it up to the waterfalls in Mananap, certainly not an average tourist's trek. One has to tortuously traverse not only a dense forest, but also a couple of kilometers of sloping mountainside.

Oh, this Bicol, and we almost failed to mention the sweet pill nuts. dont forget to grab a bag along the way.