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Baguio City – Exit day… AND Arrival in Busuanga…(Saturday, June 14)

They say a picture is worth a thousand words… Today, I will do most of my “talking” through pictures. The goal is to give a you a sense of what it is like to be in the car and or flight as we make our way to our next destination, the island of Busuanga.

We were up and on the road around 7:30 AM. We each are still awakening around 5:30 each morning – this gave us ample, no stress time to get packed up and ready to go.

Before we drove out of the city – or I should say coast down the mountain – we stopped at Dunkin Donuts for breakfast. Again, we welcomed a little taste of home.

As we proceeded down the mountain, my husband coached me… be sure to coast whenever you can. We don’t want the brakes to get too hot. “Lovely,” I thought to myself. Alas, we didn’t need to get the fire extinguisher out. And yes, there is one in the car.

Enjoy the drive…

My internal little girl, again cried, “LANDDD!” as we pulled into our parking space at Avis. All went smoothly. The attendant was very kind and helpful. She let us know that once the car was returned to the office in Manila and they did the final check over the car, we would receive an email that “closes our account.” It has yet to be seen if we will need to pay extra for the slight mishap during our travels in Baguio City. I console myself knowing that the maximum amount we would pay according to our documents is a deductible of $260.00 Not bad – all things considered.

Avis shuttled us to Clark International Airport. This airport is much smaller and very easy to navigate.

I feel somewhat “special” as we board a bus and then disembark to climb up into our airplane. Maybe this is a small taste of how the VIPs travel? Even on a less boujee level, it was a fun experience to be bused to our plane.

As we board our plane and are seated, I am grateful for the leg room on the the long flight over here.

The airport in Busuanga is even smaller than Clark airport and is not air conditioned. However, they do have large fan / air cooling units. While we wait for our luggage, I sit Dad next to one of these.

Once we have all of our suitcases, we walk outside to wait for our van (Busuanga Bay Lodge provides a shuttle to and from the airport).

The 40 minute drive to Busuanga By Lodge was primarily over paved roads, with the last section of road being dirt. Let me tell you, it was so nice NOT to be the one driving, and I am sure my husband was relieved to just be a passenger, taking a well deserved break from all of his navigational duties!

At the end of this “yellow brick road,” Busuanga Bay Lodge was a welcomed sight after a long day of travel. See for yourself…

Let the second leg of our trip begin…

Baguio City – Day #2

In the morning, I walked the brief 10 steps down the hall to my husband’s room. I asked, “Did you take a shower last night?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Did you have hot water?” He said, “Yes.” My mouth hung open. I told him about my “Indonesian shower,” and he promptly came into my room and tested to see if I had hot water. Whelp, folks, I guess I did. They have tankless water heaters – which I did see, but I guess I did not give it enough time to heat up the water. As long as we turned on the shower head faucet – which was connected to the tankless water heater – we had hot water. If you turned the other “bathtub” faucet on, we did not have hot water. That is the faucet I used last night because I thought dunking myself with cold water would be less “painful” than standing under a cold stream of weakly dripping water via the shower head. I went to ask Dad if he had hot water last night when he took a shower. He said no and also described taking an “Indonesian shower.” So I showed him how he could have a hot shower during our remaining days / nights at the seminary.

My husband and I discussed the no air-conditioning issue and decided that if we could purchase some small fans, this would facilitate cool circulation in the rooms and we should be alright. …especially because now we all had hot water for showers. AND especially because the hotels that I did look up had no vacancies. AND especially because we had all somewhat unpacked. It would have been a big deal to “pack up again” and navigate to a new place.

At 7:30 (…which didn’t necessarily feel too early because we all are awakening around 5 AM. I guess this is the jet lag effect. I wonder how long it will last?) we met NP and his family for breakfast. We walked to a very unique coffee house and had breakfast. Loved it. Would definitely go back there.

After breakfast, we left dad to rest at the seminary and went on our quest to find fans. After looking through several stores, we found a couple. Yessssss! Praying for a much better sleep tonight. We took our treasures back to the seminary, picked up Dad, and met our traveling friends at the Igorot Stone Kingdom.

According to AI, The Igorot Stone Kingdom is a man-made attraction in Baguio City, Philippines, that showcases the traditional stonework and culture of the Igorot people. It is located on a mountainside along Long Long Road and features various stone structures, including a steel bridge, life-sized statues of Igorots, and an area that resembles a castle.

There are many stairs to access each level at steep inclines. I was wondering how my dad was going to do. At first he appeared to be doing just fine – climbing each step without much difficulty. We stopped at one place to have our picture taken and he says to me, “I am kind of dizzy.” I tell him not to look down, to look straight out in front of him, and take some deep breaths. We pose for the picture. I look back at him and he is staring straight ahead, pale, sweaty, and starting to shake. I say, “Dad?” He doesn’t respond. His breathing is odd. I say, “Dad, sit down.” He doesn’t respond. I am on his left and MC is on his right. Finally MC and I are able to kind of help force him to sit on a step. Once he sits down, he is able to talk to me and again says that he is dizzy and just needs to sit a minute. I give him a drink of water and tell him to take some deep breaths. After several minutes, thankfully he appears to have recovered. We are able to get him to stand up and navigate a few more stairs up, over to a narrow walkway, over to an open area with stools to sit on. There we rest several more minutes, coaxing him to finish a bottle of water. It is around 2 PM and we have not had lunch yet. Again, thankfully this “Kingdom” has a cafe at one of the top levels of the castle part of the Kingdom. Once I felt that my dad was stable enough “to travel,” we made our way over to the cafe and ordered lunch. After a bottle of gatorade and a good lunch, we decide to descend to the car and get Dad home to rest.

I told my husband at one point, “What are we going to do if Dad had some sort of event over here?” My husband encouraged me that Dad could have something happen to him at any time, at any location. What was more important than worrying about “what if?” was helping to facilitate activities and events that he wanted to do and enjoying them with him. Never the less, I was relieved when we got him down to “ground level” safely.

After this, we parted ways with our traveling family for the rest of the day. We headed back to the seminary, rested, and then headed to Hotel Supreme for CP’s baccalaureate service. It was a very lovely, but lengthy event. It started at 5:30 and didn’t end until around 8:30 – granted they did serve a meal during this time, in addition to the actual service.

All of the students were instructed to arrive in their cultural attire. It was impressive how many different people groups were represented, and I loved seeing the creativity of each attire.

Afterward, we headed back to the seminary, and everyone was ready for a good night sleep. With fans charged up and blowing, AND with my fan app humming (I guess I was too jet lagged last night to remember that I had this on my phone to help drown out the noise of the chickens, dogs, cars, etc.),

I fell fast asleep.