A Trip to Dipolog

First post for the year..
4:00 AM March 8, 2005. It's unnatural for me to woke very early, but surprisingly I was able to do that formidable task that morning. It was raining that night before and it's very cooold. I prefer to curl up and hibernate. But Im half excited because of two things.
1. We will travel to Dipolog City! One of the places in Mindanao I've never seen.
2. Visit our co-faculty who's in the hospital. (That's why Im only "half" excited).

Were supposed to leave Iligan @ 4:30, Im thinking of drinking something hot, brushing my teeth and a hot bath but by just thinking about it cost me 5 minutes, I only have 10 minutes to go so I just washed my sleepy face and changed clothes. It's 4:10 in the morning and not a single mode of transportation were available, so I WALK the whole 600 meters of wet concrete to the campus. It's chilly! At the next crossroad I heard something crying, sounds like a cry of a woman beaten to death! Now that was freaky. But after a while I realized it could be just a canine somewhere. Or a feline vomiting. Weird.

Exactly 4:30 AM we're all settled on the IIT coaster and hit the road. We reached Mukas port at 6 AM and crossed the calm sea in a barge to Ozamiz City (just a 15 minute boat ride)..

The Bams on the barge to Ozamiz City. It's raining! That's me with a white cap.

We had our breakfast at Oroquieta City @ 7 AM. I dont know what's the name of that carenderia, I supposed to pay P35.00 but the owner just ask for P20. That was weird. As weird as their CR!! can you imagine a CR which is only a small "hole" in the floor? And beneath is nothing but sea? Talk about pollution! The city government of Oroquieta should do something about this.

We reached Dapitan City and finally reached Dipolog City at 10:30 AM and got to visit our colleague. Hmmm.. the nurses in that hospital were cute. We had also a fun moment with a policeman we called "sarge". He seems to be on the right place at the right time. Everytime we're on trouble with locating places, he is there! Weird.

Sir Bobot with his wife and some of the bams. He seems to be okay. Wish he could recover soon.

We leave Dipolog City at 1:50 PM. Im amused coz it seems like everytime we see food on the road we had to stop and buy them. Of course we had to ate them, and for the rest of the trip we do nothing but EAT! We took a short break and visit the Misamis Occidental Aquamarine Park (MOAP). The place was amazing. Nature at its best.

A quick stop at the Aquamarine Park. It's funny Im always at the left side of the picture. Man, look at my hair! Hehehe, I looked like a girl!!

We reached Ozamiz City at 6 PM and crossed the sea to Mukas. Its funny the barge lost its bearing in the dark maybe 200 meters from the port. Maybe because it was very dark that time. That's strange. But luckily we landed safe a few minutes later. The last part of the journey back home were boring, it's dark and I couldnt see a thing along the road. Finally we reached Iligan by 7 PM but was delayed coz a stupid trailer truck got stuck in the bridge. We had to detour somewhere else. It's okay coz I've seen part of Iligan which I havent seen so far. Aaaahhh Im soooo tired.

That was a fun trip overall, we had to visit 4 cities along the way. And seeing the green and chilly countryside just makes me appreciate the beauty of our country. While everyone is jammed in the noisy, hot, and dirty cities, here are the vast green, peaceful and happy rural villages. Full of life and invigorating. My dream is to live one of these rural places in the last years of my life. I was born and grow up in a little green town, now Im working in a big city, but chosing between the two I would love to be in the little green place which is my home.