Roadtrip to Bicol - Part 2

We left Veramaris at 7AM the next day. Sorsogon City was a 1 1/2 hour drive from Gubat and we wanted to get there early. Ingko was nice, albeit motel-ish. Clarence really wanted to go to the beach, so they went on an adventure to Sta. Magdalena. I decided to stay at the hotel (I know, shucks) because I promised myself that I was going to lessen my unread emails. Well, it was a very productive afternoon because from 300 unread emails, I ended up with 80. Not bad at all. We had merienda-cena at Balkon, then we prepared for the Easter Vigil mass.

The Easter Vigil mass story is something for the books.

The plan was to go to Fatima church for the 10PM mass. Fatima was at the town proper so it was around 10 minutes away. We passed a Church along the way and stopped to ask what time the mass would start, and they said 10PM. So we decided to hear mass there instead. It was the "Our Lady of Perpetual Help" church, which said "Jesus, I trust in you - Our catholic church" outside. Inside, it felt weird. Only a few pews were occupied, even if it was supposed to be an Easter Vigil mass. And there was a table in the middle of the church, with weird-looking candles. I looked around - everything else looked normal. So we waited for the mass to begin. We were even given candles by the people in front of us. A lady approached Sharon, asking her about a 'reading' of some sort, so we assumed they wanted her to read. But another lady approached us, and explained to us that it was a members-only mass, and that there were confidential rituals that would take place. She said they all thought we were guests of the reader. She was really nice about it, she even said that it probably won't be good for us because they'll be up until dawn. Basically, nice as she was, the reality was that we were kicked out of the church!

Until now we can't figure out what church it was. Our guess was that it was an Aglipayan church, but we're really not sure. It's a really funny story, and we end up laughing every time we talk about it. We ended up going to Fatima, where the mass lasted until 12:30AM.

We left Ingko at 8AM the next day. We wanted to go home on Sunday so that we still had Monday to rest. We bought Pan de Legaspi again, then it was one long roadtrip until Quezon, with some stopovers in between. We had late lunch at Yakiniku, Calauag, Quezon. And then it was again another long roadtrip until Manila. It was uber traffic starting at Sariaya, Quezon, so we went through Batangas instead. Though it was a long trip, almost 15 hours, it was so much fun because of the company. It was so much fun that no one slept the whole trip! We were laughing our hearts out, thinking of all the politicians we could set up with Sharon. That's another story altogether. We arrived in Manila at 11PM.



It felt good to travel. I thought I wouldn't be able to travel much this year because of my major trip in July, but I was wrong. I'll blog about that some other time. :)