Backpacking Northern Luzon - Dagupan

More than a little time has passed since our Northern Luzon backpacking adventure but the memories never fail to stir up fresh feelings of excitement and wonder. We explored cities, towns, beaches, mountains and went down under, no, not to Australia--hello! Northern Luzon nga, eh! Ehehehe--we went deep down under the ground, into caves that wowed us with their amazing formations.

A few years back, I went backpacking around the Philippines. It was a really great experience (and deserves its own, separate blog entry) but I hadn't gotten enough. Time constraints were numerous and it seemed like I was forever rushing to catch planes, buses, boats--which was fine but I wanted to go back and explore Northern Luzon more thoroughly.

On March 2009, our BCBP community held its annual anniversary in Baguio City. I saw this as God's way of allowing me to fulfill my dream of exploring Northern Luzon once again. Filled with excitement, I talked to my friend Kristie and it turned out that she wanted to go an adventure too but just needed company! So now there were two of us.

I hadn't seen my cousin Regine in ten years or so. It was the wonders of Facebook that brought us back in touch. She mentioned that she would be visiting the Philippines soon. As we got to talking, we found that her travel schedule would fit perfectly with our planned adventure! And so we became 3. :-)

My husband Tito, our daughter Liana, Kristie and I rode a plane for an overnight stay in Manila. The very next day, we left early and met up with our friends at the Victory Liner bus terminal in Pasay. What a wonderful trip that was -- filled with silly stories, laughter, teasing, for some parts of the trip, there was some quiet time broken only by the harmonious blending of sleep sounds. :-)

It took us 4 hours to reach the shrine of Our Lady of Manaoag. What a beautiful church that was. We were so blessed in that we were able to attend mass in that holy place. We then lined up to touch our Lady's mantle as I reached out to the Lady, I asked for 5 major favors. So far, 3 have been granted: 1) That my sister would be blessed with another baby (after 8 years she gave birth 3/21/2010) 2) That my friends husband would finally get to leave for work abroad (4/2009) 3) That our business would have new capital so that we could expand our services (11/2009). Wowowow! I'll share the 2 other prayer requests as soon as they are granted.

Outside the church were some stalls selling some native crafts as well as some delicacies. My memory needs some fine tuning as I can't recall the names of the food that we bought. I can only remember that they were delicious and I regretted not buying more than I did!

We then had a fantastic lunch at the Dagupena Restaurant. To my amazement, the bangus was colored pink! I don't know why, but it was. The vegetables were cooked just right. We just kept digging in and stuffing ourselves. I'll show you some pictures when I've figured out how to transfer them from my facebook account.

After that short visit to Dagupan, we had more photo ops outside the restaurant then went back on our chartered bus and on to the next leg of our journey: BAGUIO CITY