I love road trips. So what better way to spend Christmas than on a road trip to Baguio, specifically hurtling down the highways at 100-120 km/h on a motorbike...with your husband. And that was exactly how I spent Christmas eve and Christmas day. Incredible! It's been a little over three weeks since the trip and I am still amazed when I think about it.
The trip was my husband's idea of how we should celebrate our 12th anniversary--which actually wasn't until the 5th of January--but Christmas was our only so-called window of free time. We had to grab the opportunity for some sort of break from our busy schedules. So I'd like to think of it as a wedding anniversary and Christmas present rolled in one.
To be honest though, it wasn't all that perfect because it didn't turn out exactly the way we sort of planned it. But that's life...haha. We weren't able to leave at 12am early morning of the 24th because my Mom who agreed to watch the kids for us arrived at around 1:30 in the afternoon of that day. So we were set back much in terms of time. We wanted to be on the road by the "ungodly" hour of 12am so we would be arriving in Benguet Province by the time the sun was just peeking over those glorious mountain ranges.
Well, we ended up leaving at around 3pm which meant head-on encounter with Metro Manila traffic and other "mini" traffic jams as we tried to speed through five provinces (Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac, Pangasinan, La Union). We arrived at the foot of the mountain province about an hour to midnight. We were in Baguio City proper by 12 midnight--half frozen because it was sooooo cold. We already had jackets on but decided to put on extra ones plus bonnets, and I wished to God then I had brought gloves or mittens. And because it was a holiday and considering our time of arrival, the place where we had planned to stay had no personnel present to check us in. Why didn't we place reservations? Because Baguio has so much places where one can hit the sack at any given time. We just didn't filter in the holiday season when we were talking about the trip because we were kinda excited about the whole thing.
Well we did get to stay in a really lovely place which we found after three hours...after a very late dinner at Andok's...after driving around the town proper in search for an alternative place...after sitting in a Burnham Park kiosk while a nice young girl called her "contacts" to see if any rooms were still open...after driving around again...after sitting in a Dunkin Donut shop trying to steal warmth from a styrocup of hot choco, half laughing but at the edge of tears because we really wanted to sleep already...after driving around some more and checking with other transients places that either could not accommodate us or were charging us too much for just several hours of using one of their rooms for the night.
We had the budget but we weren't willing to pay a thousand pesos for just around 4 hours of sleep. Really! So that was the major hitch. But once we checked into the lovely house for transients that had a really charming lady owner, we were all smiles again.
We unpacked and cleaned ourselves and...well, incredible how much heat the human body can generate especially when you're uhm...making love. LOL!
Great breakfast in the morning, quick tour of the city tourist spots, snap-snap of photos to ensure the trip for posterity...and well, proof to show that we actually did it, lunch at Andok's (again), and we were on the road again speeding towards Dasmariñas, Cavite. From south to way way up north and back.
It wasn't the destination that was the major highlight. It was the whole road trip itself that was the incredible highlight! The stopovers in between speeding down the highway, the sights. In Bulacan there were rows of stores that at first I thought were selling sweets but when my husband told me to look closer, I began to see they were actually firecracker stores! And I did not realize that Pampanga seemed to have as many catholic churches as it had gambling establishments! Tarlac was sooooo long. I know, I already said that.
Ok. This post has gotten to be a novelette in length. So I will end by saying that we're tentatively planning our next road trip--to Vigan! Woohoo!
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