So we’ve been back from the Philippines for a couple of
weeks now. It’s nice to be back and have power, water, a washing machine, and
hot water again. It’s also super nice to
have peace and quiet in the mornings instead of barking dogs, loud tagolog
conversations, screaming babies, squealing pigs, cooing chickens, roaring motorcycles,
and playing children.
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| Somewhere over Luzon |
At the end of October my gal Daisy and I packed our bags,
prepared a light itinerary with a minimal amount of research, jumped on a night
bus for Taipei, and took off. It took
around 5 hours to arrive to Taipei. Fast
forward through all the flights and we found ourselves on a bus from Manila
airport to Cubao in Quezon city which took around 2 ½ hours. Finding the right bus was not easy however. We probably asked 5 people for directions to
the bus pick-up point before we successfully navigated our way around all the
“Taxi, Taxi, Taxi? Where are you going sir?” drivers trying to make their daily
tourist rip-off quota. I’ve played that
game many a time before and wasn’t going to be fooled again.
We finally got those directions from a couple of people in a
café to the left of the airport exit doors in Manila. They told us to head down to the far left
past the café all the way across the street to a parking lot where the buses
pick up passengers. With the help of a local, we communicated our destination
(Cubao) to the bus attendant. With an
“OK!” and a wave of his hand, he dismissed us to our seats. A few minutes into the ride, tickets in hand,
we realized we had no idea how long the bus ride would take and were totally passengers
of our hope and assumption the attendant would hook us up at our destination. Finally after 2 ½ hours of confusion and my
friendly interrogation of every poor soul that decided to sit next to me, the
attendant shouted “Cubao!” and pointed at us.
“We’re up,” I nodded to Daisy and we were dumped at the Cubao farmer’s
market.
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| Long trip |
After another 2 hours of wandering up and down the streets
for our bus stop and a restroom (walk into the market to find a paid yet
seemingly flooded and unkept “comfort room” in the back as soon as you are
dropped at the farmer’s market), we were able to sort through another swath of misinformation
from fellow streetwalkers to discover we needed to head back to the farmer’s
market and find an SUV or a Jeepney to take us to Montalban. What they failed to tell us was that actually
Montalban is no longer “Montalban.” The town has since been renamed
“Rodriguez.” Unfortunately none of the information I found online for Wawa had
mentioned this little timesaving piece of information. The few blogs out there seemed to be a bit
outdated, hence the purpose of this updated post. So after waiting on the street for 30
minutes, we were finally able to run down a white SUV or “FX” that said Montalban in
parentheses on the side next to the bold-lettered “Rodriguez.” The driver explained this oversight to us and
I shook my head as I realized how many Jeepneys we had passed up with “Rodriguez”
painted on the side.
The SUV
ride took about 45 minutes into Rodriguez/Montalban in the town of San Rafael where we we learned we’d
need to get a tricycle into the rural, outlying village of Wawa. After a bit of intense bargaining with
different tricycle drivers due to my skepticism of their “No jeepney, no bus,”
declarations, we haggled the price down to 35 PHP for two people (plus another
passenger who was already on the bike).
I found the best way to get a good price is to pit them against one
another since they normally try to charge 60 PHP (30 PHP each) for two
passengers. A little friendly
competition never hurt anyone. I have
little doubt the locals pay anywhere near this price. There is also supposedly
a Jeepney that runs up until 8 p.m. but we got there too late. You’d just have to tell the driver where you
want to get off.
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| Jeepney: You'll want to jump on one these bad boys in Cubao. Make sure it says "Rodriguez" on the side. (Not my photo.) |
So we
jumped on the trike and he drove us ~15 min into Wawa, dropping us off on a
dark street in this completely unfamiliar foreign village we’ve never visited. Thereafter,
we paid and thus our walk began.
Fortunately we didn’t go far before the first dark, mysterious figure of
another person came into view. “Aling
Norma’s Eatery?” we asked as we had read on existing blogs this was the place
to be for climbers visiting the area about on existing blogs. They pointed us in the right direction and we
found Norma’s place without hassle.
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| Directions I found online |
We finally met the
famous Norma and asked her if she had any of her 2 rooms for rent. “No, they
are all booked tonight,” came the soft-spoken reply. One group of foreign climbers and one local
family had grabbed them already. Being prepared for this, we asked if there was
any place we could pitch a tent. She
took us across the street to where an outpost has been set up by the local
government for a local neighborhood watch station. It’s just a small building for town meetings
and such. She told us we could park our
tent on the grass next to the building and the men who run the station all night
would watch our tent to “keep us safe.”
We thanked her and after a bit of introductory chit chat with the other
patrons of the eatery, we set up camp and crashed out after a long day of
travel. From Taipei to Wawa only took us
around 12-14 hours though it could have been quicker if we’d been a bit more
informed about where the heck we were going.
That’s part of the adventure though I suppose. This was to be the beginning of one of the most
adventurous climbing trips I’ve ever taken.
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| Maybe consider a company-wide name change. @ The Manila Airport |
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