Ilocandia Tour: Baluarte ni Chavit Singson

We had no time to waste so we headed to the "Baluarte in Chavit" in Vigan City right after our tour to the Luna Shrine

This is the Safari Gallery inside Baluarte. It's pretty amazing. One of the best shots I took.

So here's what'll greet you the moment you enter the place. It's like a wide safari.

Further up, you'll find real, live animals...

This tiger over here looks a little cute from afar but just thinking about how it could cut your hand in a snap, makes me wanna have second thoughts.

These wax figures almost seem real and scary...

Looks like Mr. Singson helped in hunting these beasts down

And for our next stop: the Bantay Watch Tower.

Ilocandia Tour: Hidden Garden & the Luna Shrine

In this post, I will be sharing to you how we had a blast in Ilocos for only Php 2,995!

So we booked earlier, had our tickets for Php 2,400+ each and enjoyed the rest of our Ilocandia experience with Shawn Sam Travel and Tours.

We all met at the SM Mall of Asia at around 10pm. The flights had been delayed that day so we were an hour or so late. [Shawn Sam Travel and Tours accepted us as joiners so there were like 4 groups in that van.] We arrived at around 6am and had our breakfast at the Hidden Garden Restaurant, which by the way, is 4th among 36 restaurants in Vigan.

It was a looong ride and so we had to fill our stomachs up. Our kind and friendly driver took us to the Hidden Garden where we were to choose among their breakfast meals like the famous Ilocos longganisa, bagnet, bangus and tapa. Sorry, I don't have pictures. We were so hungry! But the bagnet was really good.

After our sumptuous breakfast, we headed straight to the Luna Shrine, the former home of the famous Luna Brothers: Antonio ("The Fiery General" of the Philippine-American War) and Juan (the brilliant painter behind the Spolarium). They were the 2 famous among 7 siblings.

Juan Luna

Statue of Juan Luna & Paz Pardo de Tavera

Pardo de Tavera Family with Friends

Reproduction of the 19th Century Microscope

Letter of Juan Luna to the Overseas Ministry declining his appointment as intern professor at the School of Arts & Crafts in Manila

The room of the Luna sisters

Juan and Antonio Luna

This is all for now. See you in my succeeding posts :)

The Ultimate 'Croc' Adventure

For some reasons, I don't know why I totally forgot about talking about my adventure in the Crocodile Farm when I was in Puerto Prinsesa with friends.

Perhaps it was because the supposedly cute yet nasty little thing pooped on me. Well, not really. We're talking 3-5ml of the total poop a little croc could make. It did stain my yellow shirt but thank goodness for agility, I was able to anticipate its sh*tting on me. Oh well, here goes...

At the Palawan Wildlife Rescue and Conservation Center, I saw this huge skeleton of a crocodile that was believed to be the largest at its time. The croc skin you see mounted on the wall was its skin. After it died years back, they scraped it off from its body and decided to display it for viewing to the public.

There was a tour of the entire conservation center and the guide patiently waited for each one of us to finish before moving to the next attraction as some baby crocs might just be snapping at a tourist's arm before he even notices it.

So these where the cute 'babies' in the tanks. They look like they're sleeping but the guide told us to be extra carefully as they might just snap. They stay in this hatchery until they're big enough to be transferred to the ponds with the other big crocs.

When we visited, there weren't much we saw in their mini-zoo. It seemed like it's been a long time since they last updated the place so all you'll be seeing are pics of me with "the" crocs. Haha.

And this was the nasty little thing that pooped on me. While in this position, I felt its body moving. I could feel this bolus-like structure moving from its stomach to its you know. And then it happened.

I guess I'd like to visit the place again. But I hope that when I do, I'd see some more animals I didn't get the chance to see while I was there in Palawan. 

Til my next adventure! See yah! 

Pescador-ing by the Sea

When we woke up the following day after the Canyoneering thing, our bodies were all sore. Seemed like we couldn't move our legs! But! That didn't stop us from getting another quickie breakfast and heading off to the beautiful island of Pescador! 

The first thing to do was to look for the lovely dolphins under the sea. We made noise by hitting the boat with whatever hard object we had in our hands and waited until they surfaced. Luckily, we found lots of them! And they weren't irritated by the noise we made. I wish I had food to feed them. They were just so lovely!

 Then we went to Pescador Island, swam for a while and went in the middle of the sea to look for the Pawikan (Sea Turtle). Sorry, I don't have photos to show you but we swam with it and the experience was just soooo nice.

And here's a photo of us just outside the nice little house we stayed at in Moalboal.

And here's our last stop, swimming with the Sardines.

Cebu Water Adventure

So my previous post was about our first day slash first night in Cebu. Now, I bring you... what happened the "early" morning after. So we woke up at around 2 AM, rode the bus to Moalboal, Cebu at about 3 and arrived at around 5 or 6AM. We had to go to Moalboal first before going to Badian (the starting point of our Canyoneering experience) because that was the place where we found this pretty neat and nice place to make it through the night before we headed off again for the dolphin-watching and swimming with the sardines and Pawikan stuff at Pescador Island. 

Anyway, we did a "quickie" breakfast and drove all the way to our cute little house by the sea. We changed into our RASH GUARDS (the typical outfit worn by people when you search for "Canyoneering" photos on Google) and drove all the way up to Badian, Cebu.

Much to our surprise, we were not ALONE. There were hundreds of tourists [mostly Filipinos] awaiting to experience this once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

When we arrived together with our guides, we immediately put on our head gears and life jackets. They gave us some serious reminders before immersing into the cool blue waters as not following simple instructions could be detrimental to our safety. Thus, we always stayed together plus the numerous head-counts every time we arrived at certain points of our 3-hour journey.

The diving part was what scared me the most. There were cliffs as high as 30 feet from the water but you need not go into that hellish experience if you're really afraid of heights. The highest I jumped was around 10-15 feet and I was soooo satisfied with that. Haha!

Anyway, we did a lot of crazy things like throwing really silly jokes just to calm the others who weren't so fond of jumping, laughing at those who made mistakes while following the guides' orders, doing certain formations and singing while in the water... It was just FUN!

In my next post, I'm gonna show you what happened at Pesacador Island in Moalboal, Cebu.

Skywalk + Edge Coaster = Sky Coasting

 Just months ago, my friends and I visited the beautiful city of C E B U !

We sure had a lot of things to do in mind. Our journey took us from the city to the breathtaking towns of Badian, Alegria and Moalboal. But for now, I'll be sharing with you my experience at Crown Regency Hotel's SKYWALK and EDGE COASTER.

So it was actually my first time to be walking 126.55 meters (to be exact) above the ground with an overhead safety harness. Whew! At first glance, it looked pretty easy until the moment I took my first step. 

I COULDN'T MOVE!!!

Well, this crazy lady is my cousin. She seems to have been working here for a long time. Just kidding! She's just so comfortable with dangling her leg/s everywhere. Can't blame her. It's her nth time doing this "Skywalk" thing.

This was a relief! But I still felt nauseous and I couldn't believe I just made it halfway.

I just wanted to sit there forever but you see, my friends loved it a lot. Hahaha.

This photo was taken before I took my first step and right after we took our International Buffet Dinner on the 32nd (?) floor. Hmmm... The package we took was the one with the buffet dinner but since the restaurant closes at 10pm, we had dinner before the nerve-wrecking Skywalk and Edge Coaster.

And right after we took off our clothes, we headed straight to the Edge Coaster.

THIS WAS CRAZY!!!

I thought I would die that night. There were safety straps (whatever you call them) but I felt that I could jiggle my way out of that seat if I was stupid. And, we understood the instructions wrong. So the whole time, we were tilted to the MAXIMUM angle while this machine was moving. Had we known, we wouldn't have had that unnecessary stress, thinking we could die any time. 

After we finished, I asked the guide if there were instances of accidents and he said no. Okay. So I was wrong with my "jiggle" theory.

Til next time!