Guess what it’s another early start for flight number 4 from Bicol (Legazpi) to Manila. We leave our hotel at 3.30am for our 7.20am flight. We arrive at 4.45am and mercifully after the nearly 1 hour queue to check-in for the outbound flight there is absolutely no queue!! As has no become customary my bag is 6kgs overweight so I head straight to the cashier for Cebu Pacific to once again rinse my Revolut account. Being away for 2.5 months I’m afraid requires a lot of kit. I’m not a backpacker and cannot survive with minimum clothes and shoes.
Bicol International Airport is a real treat as it has good choice of small food outlets including weirdly a branch of WH Smith. We buy some great t-shirts for £3 each. It also has the best view of Mt Mayon!!
It’s a road day today as we’re off to Banaue in the north to visit the famous rice terraces. We land at Manila Airport and at 9.30am. meet our drivers and guide. We have a drive of 500km that will take approx 10 hours!!
There’s very little motorway and its one lane all the way up and one lane down the other way, hence the huge length of time for the journey.
There’s not a huge amount to see other than countryside and traffic as we make our way slowly to Banaue.
We stop for lunch at a cafe which serves the most amazing sushi. This is not our usual roadtrip fare so we’re taken by surprise when the driver comes out with the menu and asks if we’d like to eat there. It’s a big thumbs from us and so far removed from a tin of tuna, local bread, bag of crisps and a can of coke our usual sustenance on these types of road trips. Also ever so slightly healthier!
As the sun goes down the rain appears and as we ascend the hills fog starts to descend. The Philippines were struck by 6 typhoons over a 20 day period between the end of October and into November. Cannot even imagine what that must be like. As we ascend there are repeated landslides consisting of piles of mud, rocks, bamboo and trees. The driver artfully dodges them on roads with absolutely no street lights and often on blind corners.
We arrive at our hotel Banaue Grand View at 7.30pm exactly 10 hours after we left Manila Airport. We’re shown our rooms and we swiftly shower and change before making our way to the bar for so well deserved San Mig Light beers. We’re absolutely exhausted, we’ll sleep well tonight.
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