Roadtrip to Bicol - Part 1

I just realized that I haven't blogged about our Bicol trip yet. So here goes. A month before Holy Week we were trying to figure out where to go. It just so happened that Heidi, an officemate, was going home to Legaspi City. So we thought of going to Donsol, something which we've been talking about since last year. Since the roadtrip was going to be long, Holy Week became the perfect time to go. It was my very first time to go out of town during Holy Week. We usually just stay home and attend the triduum masses. But I told myself it was going to be different this year.

I went with Jovan, Clarence, Sharon and Cathy. We call ourselves the Butanding 5 (haha!) - primarily because it sounds funnier than the Sorsogon 5. We have this habit of naming the travel groups after the places we travel to - we have the Davao 5 (Mike, Clar, Jovan, Mads and me) and the Bohol 4 (Mike, Clar, Jovan and me). We left wednesday night. We felt that leaving in the afternoon would be a bad idea because of the traffic - everyone was going out of town. Plus, we wanted to arrive in Legaspi during the day. The trip was 12 hours long. It was fun at first, with everyone laughing and singing our hearts out. But of course I fell asleep after the stopover at Lucena, and was pretty much asleep until we reached Pili at 9AM. True to form. :) We had breakfast at Biggs, and afterwards made our way to Heidi's house in Legaspi, where we had lunch. Free lunch - yey!


Breakfast at Biggs


Lunch at Heidi's House

We stayed at Vista al Mayon. It was a decent place. The rooms were clean and the bathroom was okay. We slept until around 3PM, then off we went to Cagsawa Ruins. The boys stayed at Vista al Mayon to sleep - understandable for Jovan who drove the whole way! Sharon drove the CRV for the afternoon. (She's a good driver, in my opinion.) The Cagsawa Ruins was really beautiful, and the view of Mt. Mayon was perfect. Too bad that it was cloudy that day.


Group picture at Cagsawa Ruins


What's left...


View of Mayon Volcano

Heidi introduced us to Pan de Legaspi and it was so, so yummy! It would have been so much better though with butter! We went to Central Market, checked out some bags, but were not able to buy any. Then it was time for DJC Halo-Halo - the special thing about this Halo-Halo was that it had cheese on top. It was really good! Then we did some toiletries shopping at Gaisano. We picked up the boys then went to Heidi's house again for dinner. Free dinner - yey again!


Yummy, yummy Halo-Halo!

Friday was Butanding day, so we started early. We were at Heidi's house by 6AM. Free breakfast - yey for the third time! We arrived at Donsol at 8AM. Good thing that we had reservations, there were so many people and the line was long! Randy was the name of our interaction officer and he was great! We waited for a long time for the Butanding to show up - at one point Randy even asked us jokingly "sino dito may balat?" But, when they showed up, they came in droves! It was too bad that I couldn't join them swimming - I REALLY want to go back to be able to swim with the Butanding.


Ready for the Butanding!

On a side note, this was a special experience for me because I wasn't scared of the boat all! I'm scared of boats, you see. Especially small ones. I guess this is part of my practicing the law of attraction. It may seem small to some people, but it's awesome for me!

We had late lunch at Balkon, at Sorsogon City. The food was GREAT! Lutong bahay right there. The owners were the ones who took our orders so the service was great too. To anyone who will be visiting Sorsogon City, I highly recommend this restaurant/bar. Great Bicolano food at relatively affordable prices. We headed to Jollibee for dessert, then off we went to Veramaris at Gubat, Sorsogon.


The girls at Balkon...


Posing with Jollibee!

It wasn't a nice place. Which made us worry because were were supposed to stay there for 2 nights. Immediately, we walked along the beach to look for another place to stay. The alternative, Rizal Beach Resort, wasn't better. The locals even said that we were better off at Veramaris. We accepted the fact that we were spending the night there, but we made sure we had a place to transfer to the day after. Thank God for Romy! We saw him at Rizal Beach Resort, but he was there with friends only for the beach. They stayed at his friend's place in Sorsogon, so he looked for a place for us and found the Ingko Hotel.

While walking along Rizal beach...