Exploring the North Part 2

To everyone who has a reason to celebrate it, Happy Valentines Day! ♥

Now that that's out of the way, here's the second part of my Ilocos travel log. It took a long time, I know, but it's always better late than never, right? Anyway, days 2 and 3 had us exploring more of the province and with each minute, I was realizing just how much I've fallen in love with the place. We literally went everywhere - the trek to Kabigan Falls made for an excellent reason to bond with friends over random conversations; photo ops in Bantay Abot Cave had me finding out that some friends are scared of heights and that others have serious modelling potential (HAHA); and Calle Crisologo convinced me, as have other similar things, that I was definitely born on the wrong era. But more than anything, the trip made me realize how absorbed I've been lately by everything else so much so that I've actually forgotten that a huge part of my childhood was spent around nature, and how much that younger version of myself actually loved it. But I remember it now, and I don't think I shall ever forget it again. And, well, I don't mean to.

Day 2

Day 2 was actually a gloomy one with on-and-off rains making me regret choosing to leave my jacket at home (regret #1). I was almost freezing half the time and I'm actually having a hard time remembering now how I managed not to. The long trek to the falls did nothing to ease the cold, I'm sure, but I honestly still enjoyed the whole thing because I was too busy admiring the view around us to mind the weather. When I wasn't stopping to look at anything, I was too preoccupied with watching where I stepped because I would have really been defeated by my clumsy nature and would have fallen if I didn't, hence, the lack of photos. But take my word for it, everything was downright beautiful.

Kabigan Falls. Trust me, this photo does nothing to give justice to how beautiful this place is! (Note to self: get better at low light conditions!!!)

We proceeded to see Bantay Abot Cave where, as in many other occasions during the trip, I was reminded of my forgotten love for beaches.

Random stop en route to the cave because we all thought this was a pretty road. HAHA

I actually took a nice shot of the entire cave and was quite satisfied with myself only to find out later on that rain droplets on my lens ruined the whole thing. Regret #2: choosing to leave behind my lens hood </3

We went to some beach resort (the name escapes me) afterwards only to decide five minutes later that we wanted to go back to the hotel owing to how cold it was at the time. So we did, and for the rest of the afternoon, I decided to finish writing my paper which was due that same day. We all took a rest for a bit with others deciding to sleep the entire afternoon away. Some of us decided to enjoy isolation under a cottage with beer on hand, but most of us proceeded to go to the beach to play Frisbee. I actually did for a bit (imagine that! HAHAHA!) but quit after a while because I really just wanted to stand by the shore pretending I was Ariel in that scene in Little Mermaid 2 where she was feeling the sea with her feet. (I have simple joys, okay? Hehe) I left my camera at the hotel because I didn't feel carrying it around. Regret #3: It didn't occur to me that I still could have taken photos with my phone.

Day 3

We had an early start on Day 3 because it was the last day of our Ilocos trip and we had to go back to Ilocos Sur to cross out the rest of the stuff on our itinerary. By this time, I already had a difficult time speaking given how loud I'd been the past two days and that kind of made the day initially disappointing. But things have a way of turning themselves around and I really couldn't care less about my vocal cords at the time anyway so it was all good eventually. We went to visit one last church in Laoag (where my phone discovered LTE again, yay!), went to Baluarte, and finally, Calle Crisologo. ♥

Ironically, we only made this stop on the last day.

In Calle, everything is perfect and nothing hurts. ♥ Vintage will always and forever be love.

So I guess that concludes my trip. Suffice it to say, I came back from my trip with the knowledge that I loved my trans group more than I did before it, and if you knew me personally, you'd know that that's saying a lot. So for the memories I shared with you on this trip, my darling infin8, I will always be thankful. :)

Here's a link to part 1: http://www.thewunderkind.net/2015/01/exploring-north-part-1.html