SUNDAY, JUNE 18
We woke up from our fancy hotel and hit the road. I’m really glad that we did so much of the drive during the day, because, WOW!!! What an amazing drive. It was an awesome twisty road, and it was stunningly beautiful. I love how beautiful and green everything is in the Philippines.
All along the entire drive were houses. Right on the side of the road. And on the other side of the houses? Cliffs. These houses are literally built on cliffs. We later learned they are called ‘Hanging houses’ And there were little kids and dogs running around, playing the entire way. It made me so nervous to see all these packs of little kids running around between the busy road and those cliffs.
Man. This place was GORGEOUS!!!
It was such a fun drive. I have never enjoyed a drive so much. But I was still pretty darn excited when I saw this:
So, we finally rolled into Banaue (the town) and it was not what I expected. I was expecting a somewhat touristy town, complete with several American franchises like McDonald’s or Pizza Hut or something. Nope. Wrong. And, really, there were very few tourists. I’m guessing because it is pretty far out of the way from anything else (8 hours from Manila). And we’re not talking an easy going 8 hour drive. There were some crazy mountainous roads to be traversed.
We finally arrived and started hunting for our hotel. We had reservations at the Rice Homestay. But we couldn’t find the stinkin’ place. (See that sign up above? It is practically invisible from the road.) And the locals weren’t much help. They kept giving us conflicting directions. We asked so many people for directions. And to top it all off, the town has one really skinny road, in many places only wide enough for a single car. I drove up and down that ridiculous road So. Many. Times. And I had to do at least a million 40-point turns. (In a manual transmission car, mind you.)
Finally we asked someone who gave us our first helpful bit of information. Apparently the hotel is below the level of the road. You have to go down a bunch of stairs to get to it. Another person was able to tell us what color the sign was. Which was also helpful. So I did my thousandth 400-point turn. And someone came out and flagged us down. It turns out that the last girl we’d talked to was a relative of the owners and she’d called and told them to look for us. Hallelujah!!
I think it was also difficult to locate this place cause I was expecting something larger. But, this place only had 4 rooms? Maybe 5 or 6. Anyway, we went and got checked-in and settled-in. And man, the view from our room was killer. We could even see some small rice terraces from our room, so that was fun.
We then decided that we should get some food before it got dark. While we were preparing to head out, it started sprinkling. We made it down to the lobby area. And then the deluge really began.
It turned into one of the craziest rainstorms I have ever experienced. We decided that we would have to be insane to venture out into that downpour. In part, because the stairs had turned into a muddy waterfall, in the space of 10 minutes.
And so, we watched the rain. Well… some of us watched the rain.
I’m pretty sure we scandalized all the Filipinos by allowing our children to frolic about in the rain. They were concerned that the kids would get sick. That didn’t stop them from taking pictures though 🙂
This was honestly just one of those perfect moments that you know you will remember. Jonathan and I watching the kids play in the rain, in this amazingly beautiful place. Just, perfection.
#thisisthelife While the kids played, Jonathan and I ordered some food from the homestay kitchen and we waited for it to be cooked. And I went over and got a tour of the rice terraces all set up for the next day.
Eventually, the rain slowed down and the sun went down. And the kids decided they were done splashing around. We ate our dinner and went to bed. And the kids slept in the buff, because they had been wearing their jammies whilst prancing about in the rain.
