ABW Dec 2019 -1

S
iargao located in the province of Surigao del
Norte, is an archipelago in itself consisting of more
than 40 islands with Siargao being the largest.
The area consists of 9 municipalities, 8 of whom
are located on the main island, these are; Burgos, Dapa,
Del Carmen, General Luna, San Benito, Pilar, San Isidro
and Santa Monica. The 9th municipality of Socorro is the
second largest island in the group and is on the island of
the same name.
The name Siargao originates from the
Visayan word siargaw or saliargaw a
species of mangrove that is found on
the island, in fact one of the largest
mangrove forests in the Philippines
can be found on the western side of
the island in the municipality of Del
Carmen.
In the late 80’s an
American drug
trafficking, surf
explorer named Mike
Boyum lived in a small
hut by the beach in
General Luna.
Up until the 80’s Siargao was nothing more than a sleepy
island town in the Caraga region of Mindanao. The Lumad
island folks subsisted through fishing, harvesting coconuts
and not much else. In the late 80’s an American drug
trafficking, surf explorer named Mike Boyum lived in a
small hut by the beach in General Luna, this was after Mike
burned down his G-Land surf camp in Java, Indonesia
during a government crackdown and found Siargao as a
place to hide out as well as surf. The area
where his hut stood in Siargao fronted an
area that will eventually be called Cloud-9,
named after a locally made chocolate bar.
Other surf explorers came around the
same time including surf photographer
John Calllahan of Surfer Magazine and the
surf breaks of Siargao grew in renown. If
you want to know more about this story
you can look for a documentary film called
The iconic Cloud 9 Tower
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