Trip to Baguio/Banaue

We convinced the girls when we were in the States that the Rice Terraces of Mt Banaue are a must see for every visitor here in the Philippines so the day after we took care of Dan’s immigration woes, we went to Baguio. I’ve already arranged to have the keys for our friend Lita’s town house in Baguio so we can stay the night there. My brother-in-law Francis and his family live there but I didn’t think they’ll have room for all of us. Rachel’s Auntie our Kumareng Tess was more than willing to loan us their big Mercedes van. But since I’m used to driving the Innova, I told everyone to pack light and we’ll just cram ourselves into it instead.

We left San Fernando on the morning of Wednesday Jan 3. This was my first time to drive to Baguio but I figured there must be signs to guide me along the way so I was pretty confident that I won’t need a navigator this time. I was wrong of course. In Tarlac somewhere, we were following this road and then I suddenly saw a sign saying there’s so many kilometers to Manila, which is in the opposite direction! Everyone knows I’m not your typical macho driver so I pulled over and asked for directions! We were basically told that we missed a turn and we were off by about 7 kilometers which wasn’t too bad. As it turned out, the turn did not have a sign saying that is the way to Baguio! Aside from that, the trip to Baguio was uneventful.

Since we didn't have room in the van, we only had a few snacks with us so we stopped at Chow King, Jollibee, McDonald's to have our meals. We got some local delicacies on the roads, buko pie (my favorite) and some tupig (which according to Reggie tasted like 9V batteries!)

My brother-in-law and his wife met us there in front of some hotel and he showed us the way to where Lita’s town house is located. After we unpacked our stuff, we went to a restaurant and had dinner. He spent the night with us because we agreed, he’ll drive us to Banaue the next morning. It was a pretty hectic trip and it basically went this way: He drove to Banaue (through 3 sets of zig-zags or winding roads) and it took us almost the whole day. The shorter route would have been rougher roads. We got there, took several pictures and headed back to Baguio. This time I relieved him and went behind the wheel. On the way back, this was already night time, I took one wrong turn but we figured it out before it was too late. The morning after, we drove back to San Fernando.