Ironwulf.net: En Route – The Philippines, Travel, Photography Blog

I’ve been looking at the stark gray sky repeatedly while hoping that it would clear up or much less, let the rains abate. It’s been at least an hour since our original call time. We’ve eaten our packed breakfast and spent time idle with Sun City‘s speedy internet connection. We could have slept over these wasted time but we were all raring to go to Palaui Island. It will be my first time to set foot on this island at the northeast tip of mainland Luzon and I won’t let this rain dampen my excitement.

From our Red Market walk with Antonio Coelho, our coach drove to the eastern side of Macau Peninsula for Guia Hill, whose peak is the highest point in Macau. It was a short drive but we had to leave our coach and take a cable car up the hill. From the hill we still had a few minutes light hike. It was midday but the overcast sky was our friend. We passed by a few joggers and people doing some martial arts sparring along the way before we reached the foot of the Guia Fortress, one of the 25 UNESCO sites under Macau’s Historic Center.

Ever since the workshop started we’ve been waking up earlier than the sun. We were joking most of the time that we’ve managed to accomplish a lot before 9am (when one of the participant’s alarm would start ringing) than on a usual day. Even on the last day of our workshop, we had to wake up a tad earlier. We noticed that the days are longer here in Batanes, by 5am we could already see the sky light up. So by 4:40am, our jeep was already rolling towards Valugan Bay.

Aside from finding the range of accommodations in Basco and also discovering places to eat, I spent a lot of my time in Batan Island just chilling out and wandering around. It was after a 4 day of assignment so I didn’t really want to pressure myself to produce as many photos as I needed. I decided to be experimental this time and set my camera to monotone mode and capture Batanes in monochrome hues. At different times of the day, I go to these places walking distances from Basco center and just sit there for at least an hour and just be amazed at this wondrous creation.

Ironwulf.net and the SEAIR Adventure Club is giving away two round-trip SEAIR tickets to Basco, Batanes. More details here.

Ooops! I just realized I still have a lot of back log from my travels. So in Between the China posts, I’ll be posting entries from those recent local travels as well. I thought it would add variety and hope not to cause confusion on continuity. This entry is another one of my favorite places in our country, Batanes. Same trip brought to you by the cool guys at Geiser Maclang and Epson Philippines. And probably one of the most memorable series as well.

I’ve always wanted to add a multimedia feature on my blog. In fact, I announced early last year that I would be doing an Ian Wright thing and present some of my travels in a video documentary feature. That may not be too far off the future. For now, here’s my very first video-log on our recent family outing in Bolinao, Pangasinan. Somehow this is also a bit sentimental since after more than 5 years, our whole family is together on this vacation since one of my sister in Canada and another from the USA decided to come home. Video after the jump.