Family trip · Island · El Nido
The Ramos Family
Salt & sun · June 2026 · 9 travellers
“Mama said she would only come if we all came. So we all came.”
The trip was proposed in a group chat in 2024 and nearly died there four times. What saved it was a single date everyone agreed to before anyone booked anything.
The condition
Lola Rosing, who had never been further south than Batangas, said she would come only if all three of her children came. Two of them had not taken leave in the same month since 2019.
Day three
The lagoon, early, before the other boats. Nine people, one bangka, and a seventy-three-year-old woman who got into the water before any of her grandchildren had finished putting on their vests.
What they said
- “Seventy-three years old and she went in the water first.” — Tito Erwin
- “I have four hundred photos and I am in eleven of them. Worth it.” — Ate Cha, the family photographer
- “We are doing this every two years now. It is decided.” — Tita Let
- “I did not know the sea could be that colour.” — Lola Rosing
The last night
Grilled fish on a plastic table, nine people sunburnt in nine different patterns, and a plan for 2028 that three of them are already treating as binding.
The palette
The team
Flights, boat days and who was sharing which room lived on one Setnayan page — and the four hundred photos landed in one place instead of five phones and a dead group chat.