Summer is Here!

It's you're-sweating-as-soon-as-you-come-out-of-a-cold-shower season.

And the best way to deal with this weather?

Another cold refreshing shower!! Woo - Hoo!!

Taal Lake and Volcano

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

We checked out of our Jestra townhouse but not before taking a look at Myrna's check list from Mama Lits - turn off appliances, take beddings, etc.

Even from the night before, we've already talked about going to Taal Lake and Volcano. So, after a quick breakfast at Jollibee, we went down and we went down and we went down to the lake. It was a pretty long and winding - literally, all downhill road so narrow at times I had to backup to make room for a car coming up. We stopped a couple of times at some viewpoint to take some pictures.



But the view up on the hill was nothing compared to the one down by the lake.


We bought more euphorbias around the corner, they were pretty cheap down here, about 50% less than normal. We had to cram all our plants behind the van. The guy at the nursery told us of a much shorter way going up and that's what we took. It was indeed short - about half the time it took us to come down but the way was so steep that I was only on first and second gear most of the time.

Finally we headed on home but we had drop by Bicutan - Mama Lit's place, to drop off the house keys. It was already past noon when we left Bicutan but we didn't want to make anymore stops fearing we'll get stuck in the EDSA traffic. We ignored our hunger and had lunch at one of the rest stops at NLEx. We got off at the San Fernando exit and dropped off Myrna and Vir in San Felipe and....
...vacation is over!

Trip to Pagsanjan

Pagsanjan Falls is known all over the Philippines as one of the few prime tourist destinations. At least, with Pagsanjan, I know it's in the province of Laguna.

That's about it.

That was then.


Tuesday - March 11, 2008

We woke up at 5 and had a quick breakfast. The day before, Manny suggested we be in Los Banos by 8. Since we now have a better idea of the SLEx traffic, we thought giving ourselves a couple of hours to Los Banos from Tagaytay should be plenty.

A couple of hours was pretty much what we needed. We were at Manny & Chi's place around 8. Again he wanted to drive but Pareng Vir convinced him they ride with us. The drive to Pagsanjan was fairly smooth. Just like Tagaytay there were plenty of nurseries selling various flowering plants by the roadside. We also noticed a lot of stores having signs of "uling ice". I got the urge to stop and inquire what kind of ice is uling ice. Uling translates to charcoal, I thought, "Do they sell black ice?" Finally Manny said there are a lot of resorts in the area where people spend the day swimming and having picnics and barbecue, thus - ice AND charcoal.

Our destination was a local Pagsanjan hotel called Rapids Hotel. Before we even passed by the Pagsanjan arc, we noticed a lot of people on the sidewalk and on motorbikes flagging us down.



Then we passed by and read a couple of huge billboards warning tourists to beware of 'flaggers'. They hawk boat rides to the falls which we found out later are way overpriced. The standard fee for a boat ride in shooting the rapids should be no more than 650 pesos per person.

When we arrived at Rapids Hotel, we were greeted by a shut gate and people milling around told us it was bought by some Koreans and is currently being renovated and if we're interested they can take us somewhere else for a boat ride. So I made a U-turn and followed them to a place called Amorous Restaurant. Donna closed the deal after they told us the Bureau of Tourism requires them to provide life vests to boat passengers. We were told it'll take a couple of hours up and back and in the meantime Manny was making a deal with the restaurant manager to prepare our lunch for us.

So, Donna and I donned our life vests and boarded our boat with a couple of boat men, one each fore and aft, that's front and back for ye landlubbers! There was a stretch of the river before reaching the first set of rapids (from a total of 14) where there was a motorized boat which pulled ours to save our boat men their energy for the actual rapid shooting.

Shooting the rapids is basically rowing-pulling-pushing-sometimes-lifting-carrying the boat UPSTREAM. And the current was not some lame peaceful water flowing, this was WHITE WATER! I realized it was terribly hard work for the boatmen maneuvering our boat in between rocks with such a narrow space at times that we were told to ALWAYS keep our hands inside the boat to prevent them from being crushed! And the boat sometimes takes in water, really cold spring water! My shorts were soaked, dripping actually, by the time we were done.

These shots were actually taken downstream, I was just way too nervous to take pictures of the rapids on the way up.


I was pretty tense everytime the boat pitched a bit to the side especially when it takes water. There really is a very remote chance of drowning with our life vests and all but it's just the non-swimmer in me taking over. Our boat men reassured us they've known no boat that turned over or capsized during the 15 years or so that they've worked there.

There was a smaller waterfalls midway through called Talahib and it was tall and beautiful but when we reached Pagsanjan Falls, all of my anxieties from the boat ride flew away with the water! It was gorgeous and spectacular. It's really worth the trip. Shooting the rapids was the icing in the cake in the whole experience. It took us over an hour going there.



Obviously, the boat ride back was much quicker since we're now shooting the rapids riding with the current. It was the same way with the narrow spaces in between rocks, however.

On the way back we passed by a lot of boats carrying Korean tourists who all came from Paradise Resort which is owned by another Korean.


When Donna and I arrived, they were getting our lunch put together, on banana leaves! Pretty authentic, don't you think? We had some sigang bangus, ningnang tilapia and some pork barbecue.



What a great way to end our Pagsanjan Falls trip but we weren't quite done with Pagsanjan though. On the way back we visited a couple of old churches which reminded me of some of the churches in Europe especially of the Magdalena Church.

PAGSANJAN CHURCH




PILA CHURCH



And finally, my favorite, MAGDALENA CHURCH




For meryenda (afternoon snack) Manny took us back to Los Banos to visit a friend who's one of the municipal councilors. She owns a restaurant by Laguna Lake called Dalampasigan Restaurant. I had halo-halo (with ube ice cream on top, yum!) like everyone else and they also had turon, buko pandan and some other local snack, forgot what it was called.


Our host (whose favorite expression is, "Bueno, bueno"), showed us around her place. It's actually very nice. They have a house quartet who entertained us while we were eating. They sang a few Beatles songs and some other oldies - Cascades, Dave Clark Five, etc.



And our last stop - buko pies and espasol!



We finally went back to Tagaytay and had dinner at Chow King Restaurant by the roundabout.

Next blog will be the final leg of the trip - Taal Lake and Volcano.