Kiltepan Peak (photo grabbed from here)
When I woke up by 3AM, I quickly packed our remaining things and readied myself while Jem slept through it all. Before 4AM though, I woke him up and asked him to change his clothes to what he'll be wearing on our way back to Manila. After that, he slept again.
As you may have noticed, yes, we only brought 1 jacket each.
When 5AM neared, we were asked by one of the tour guides to hike down on our own since our van couldn't climb the steep way to our accommodation without passengers inside. So in our dejected state, we walked down the muddy road.
Halfway though, we were met with the jeep which will be our service to Kiltepan. Since most of our fellow tourists who stayed on a separate home-stay already occupied the inside of the jeep, I convinced Jem that we should ride on its roof :D 2 of our companions also joined us on the jeep's roof so we were a total of 6 there (along with 2 others who came from a different accommodation).
It was another worth while experience in Sagada. Although it was only a 15-minute drive, we still felt it took longer than that due to the bone-freezing cold that was seeping through our clothes whenever the driver accelerates.
Since it was still pretty dark, we couldn't really see where we were until we were greeted by the rough road which dictates that we're already near. It felt like a roller coaster ride and our companions kept on screaming whenever we encounter a bump on the road. It was pretty fun!
Unfortunately though, traffic got worse when we're almost at the top since the place was pretty packed. We opted to walk the rest of the road to get to the peak.
Due to the non-stop rain the night before, and the slight drizzle in the morning, the road was very muddy and as expected, we didn't get to see the sunrise. Or any sign of the sun, at all.
If the weather was being kinder that day, we were supposed to have witnessed the sunrise as seen on the first picture I included. Unfortunately though, we only got to see a sea of fog.
Not wanting to get stuck at the peak longer than necessary, we trekked down once again, being very careful so as to not bury our feet on the mud. On our way back, Jem opted to sit inside the jeep and since the others also wanted to experience what was it like to sit on its top.
After that, we got back to where our van had been parked. Since we were trying to catch up with time, we were advised that we'll just eat our breakfast along the way.
With that, we bid farewell to Sagada and traveled down to Bontoc.
We were dropped off at this one restaurant (I'll find it's name, sorry I forgot huhu) that was near Marky Cielo's house and resting place. Their serving is plenty and they have this to-die-for brewed coffee. We didn't get to take lots of pictures cause we were really hungry, but still we made sure that our stay is remembered.
We went back to our van and continued our travel down to Baguio. Jem and I made a mistake though, since we drank coffee before leaving, we were pretty much uncomfortable since we needed to pee every few minutes HAHA. Fortunately, we had a quick stop-over at this viewing deck where we can check out the rest of the Mountain Province for the last time.
The viewing deck had a small and very DIRTY CR but we had to gulp down our kaartehan and use it anyway :)) After our puke-worthy business LOL, we quickly went back to the van and showered ourselves with our alcohol.
We continued our descent and by some time, most of us had fallen asleep. Here are some of the pictures we took while we still had some energy left.
We finally reached La Trinidad by 4PM. By 4:30, we were dropped off at the famous Strawberry Farm where we had our last minute souvenir shopping.
With our SUPER AWESOME AND FUNNY DRIVER, KUYA HARRISON! #TeamKurimaw
Since we no longer have that much money, Jem and I opted to buy the pre-packed strawberries instead of picking it up ourselves. Besides we didn't have that much time. After our shopping, we were quickly ushered back to our van since we were still going to have a quick stop at Baguio's Lion's Head.
We continued our travel and was eventually greeted by the familiar traffic of Baguio by 5PM.
We proceeded to Kennon Road and reached the Lion's Head by quarter to 6PM.
Sadly, the statue had been commercialized by one paint company due to the restoration they have done. So we decided to make fun of it instead LOL.
After that, we traveled down to La Union to have our dinner. All our other fellow Travel Galore tourists were also here, so I guess this is their designated stop-over before travelling back to Manila.
For our travel back to Manila, we used TPLEX then proceeded to NLEX so the travel time was pretty much shortened. Some of our companions asked Kuya Harrison to drop them off to their exit in NLEX so we had to say our "goodbye"s and "see you soon"s earlier than expected.
We reached Manila at around 11-ish and asked our driver to drop us off at Kamias/Kamuning.
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So that's how our travel to Banaue-Sagada-Baguio went! Overall the services we received from Travel Galore is pretty much exceptional. We might have failed to perfectly follow our itinerary, but our awesome driver and other staff of Travel Galore made it enjoyable.
Shout-out to Kuya Harisson and Kuya Ziddler, you guys were awesome and funny! Just be extra careful on the road HAHA
Also, to #TeamKurimaw, Ai, Rizel, Finalyn, Obet, Nap, and Weng, we hope to see you guys again! For our next travel adventure! PAK GALORE!
Jem and I are already planning our next joiners tour with Travel Galore this coming June so I hope we get to experience the same service :)
To Travel Galore, more power to you guys!!!
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Click here to get to Part 1 or here for Part 2 :D
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