Day 1, morningMy family went to a trip to northern Luzon last week. It was a week-long vacation. It was a rides-heavy vacation (imagine having to travel from Alimodian to La Union), and it was tiring, but I'm dying to have another vacation just like it.
This vacation was born more than a year ago when I promised Izanor that I, together with mom and dad, will attend her graduation. And so save money I did, and in February this year already booked tickets for the trip. Dad left for work in the middle of March, and so it was my sister who went along with us.
I think Mom and Laurice seemed much more excited than I was for the trip because the day we were leaving for Manila, they woke up at 2:00 am! (Find out why they were very excited here.) They bathed and got ready so very early that when I roused from my bed, they were already as impatient as their piles of bags waiting for me.
We left home on the 31st of March at around 4:30 in the morning and checked in at the airport at around 5:30. Our flight was at 6:20, the first flight from Iloilo to Manila via Cebu Pacific.
The flight was on time, thankfully, and we arrived in Manila at around 7:10 am. We got all our baggage out before 8:00, but we didn't have much luck waiting for the regular taxi at the Terminal 3 waiting area. It was past 9:00 am when we got our ride, and the traffic was really horrible. The situation even got me into a little quarrel with the driver when a) he wanted to charge us 350 pesos for the ride from NAIA 3 to the PARTAS Bus Station in Cubao, and b) for taking several detours from the route to Cubao, reasoning that the traffic was heavy. I Insisted, of course, that we use his taxi's meter, but I ended up paying him more anyway when he argued that they charged a fee of 55 pesos for parking at the airport. That didn't really get me complaining. The meter was at 180, and paying him 230 pesos (50 pesos over the meter) was still much lesser than how much he wanted to charge us.
We arrived at PARTAS at around 9:45. (That's another reason why I didn't complain about the additional 50 pesos for the taxi.) The PARTAS bus was scheduled to leave at 10:00 am, and we were just on time. So sweet! That's just lucky for the first day of the trip.
Day 1, afternoon
The bus left at around 10:15 am. Another footnote to the concept of Filipino time. I spent most of the time in the bus sleeping, but also enjoyed some of the scenes on the road since the bus did not take its usual route. It was the first time my ride passed by the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport in Pampanga, and by Urdaneta City in Pangasinan and, although I was sleepy, I had to look at scenes. It was mom's and Laurice's first time to go north, alright, but I think they slept more than I did and missed many scenes I was so awed to see the first time I went to La Union in 2005.
Our ride took almost 7 hours. The traffic was heavy in Tarlac and in Urdaneta, and there was a road accident in Bauang causing more traffic, so the bottomline is there was so much traffic that day. And oh, I think I also mentioned the monster traffic condition in Manila when we arrived there.
Luckily for me, I'm always with my Nikon D40. In the last 2 hours of our ride to San Fernando, La Union (to distinguish it from the other San Fernando which is in Pampanga), I toyed with my cam and happened to see this boy and his interesting reflection in the window of the bus. The picture on here is my favorite among the shots.Finally, before the sun disappeared in the South China Sea, we arrived at San Fernando City. Izanor greeted us with a bilao of palabok bought at Mandarin House Hotel & Restaurant. And off we headed to another ride for the peaceful and quiet Nadsaag.
