My Pawikan Experience

Thanks to The Girl Scouts, I was able to visit many amazing places such as the childhood house of a president and many more! But it all starts at the house.. at 3:15 am.

We were to be picked up by the van at 5:30am at a place very far away from my house, so we had to wake up early. I, of course, set the alarm too early, so I woke up an hour earlier than I was supposed to. I meant to set my alarm for 3:50 in the morning, but I set one for 3:15 instead. Talk about a big brain moment. Anyway, I woke up at 3:15 and was unable to go back to sleep.

After a few minutes of lying down, I gave up and just ate a very early breakfast while reading random books.

When I finished reading, it was already 3:50, so I got ready. I packed my bag, got dressed, then woke up mother, so that she could prepare too.

At around 4:10am, we left to go get picked up, we were able to book a Grab driver very quickly, but something wasn’t right. When we booked the Grab driver, he was 5 minutes away. After 15 VERY long minutes, he was still 5 minutes away. So, we canceled on him and looked for another driver.

After a while, we were able to book one more, we got there somewhat early and stopped at Ministop to get food. When we were eating, mother noticed that her bag was strangely light. Apparently, while we were running, my jacket that she had borrowed, fell off. I was a very horrible start for a very amazing day.

When the whole group got picked up, we went to Museo Ni Ramon Magsaysay. We learned about his childhood, his family, his clothing, his house, and how he died.

The topic I found most interesting was how he died. He died in a plane crash. What makes it interesting is that they couldn’t determine the cause of the crash. Some say it was overweight because of the cargo being too much. Some say it was a bomb. Others say it was shot down. There is no way to determine for sure.

After waiting for a bit, we went out to go eat, I ordered Lechon Kawali (because it's my favorite food) and milk. The place we ate at had a very urban feel. It had no walls keeping it from the outside and the only isolated place was the kitchen.

After our little lunch break, we went to the beach where the main event will be held.

After a long walk on the coast, we arrived at an estuary. This is where the river meets the sea. Our guide jokingly calls it Alabang because the tubig alat and tubig tabang meets there.  We swam for a bit, tried to find fishes, and played games. I learned how to skip a rock there because our guide taught me. After a few minutes, we found a fish. It was very very small and pretty quick. After that there was not many interesting things that happened during the swim. 

After a while, we were called to a hut so that we could be briefed about turtles. The briefing was very short but I learned a lot. Like the difference between turtles and tortoises. Apparently, they were very different! We also learned about the 7 different Philippine turtles, how they lived, and what they do. Apparently, when the turtles are born. After 35 years they come back to lay more eggs.

 After the briefing, we were called outside to watch and protect the little turtles as they crawl into the sea. 

It was a very tiring day but I think it was worth it.

My Sumaguing Cave experience

 It was a bright day and sunny day, we were about to go spelunking at Sagada’s well known Sumaguing cave. When we entered just after 2 minutes of going down we could already see our breath! It was very cool (pun intended) because I have always been fascinated by weird Science things. Before we entered our guide told us to not hold on to each other and just use the rocks to stabilize yourself.

After a quick re-count we started to descend into the cave, it was very very dark. We couldn’t see anything if it weren’t for the guide having a lamp. After going down the cave for a bit we came across a few bats, they were very loud but they didn’t bite. It was very fun!

After a while we went into a part with water, the water was surprisingly clean and, of course, very very cold. We had 2 choices, either try your best to balance yourself and walk on the thin part of the cave or we could just walk through the water. I, being already very tired from the climbing, chose to go through the water. It was very nice, it was cold enough to not be that easy to walk through but it was warm enough to not be impossible to walk though.

After walking through some very cold bit we went deeper into the cave, we took a small break because we were all feeling a bit tired.

Then, we went deeper.. and deeper.. and deeper.. until we reached the very bottom of the cave. When we reached this part we took a few pictures. There was a corner that was very small but surprisingly clean, we held the lamps that the guides brought and took a picture there.

Surprisingly enough, there was an optional part of the cave that went deeper. The guide said it was very hard so I chose not to go since it must have been scary. While waiting for the others my mother felt really tired, so we drank Gatorade and waited for about 5 minutes.

The first thing we had to ascend was a rope on a slightly slanted surface, it looked very menacing but to my surprise it was very easy, we had to keep our legs apart and slowly climb the rope in order to progress.

After that it was climbing very steep and moist rocks  which was really hard since you had to pull your weight and if you fell you would get really hurt, which was easy since the rocks were wet.

After climbing ,for what seemed like an hour, we finally got to a part that wasn’t very steep. But we had to use a ropes, tires, and rope ladders to progress because it was very slippery. Due to my lack of core strength, or any strength at all, this was very hard.

Once the climbing bit was done it was just walking back to the exit, though you still had to be cautions since some rocks were slippery. One of my groupmates was to tired that they slipped and hurt themselves at the very end. I would guess that they were tired because they went into the hard part.

After a few we were able to exit, most of us still able to walk and talk normally. But some of us.. uh.. weren’t able to do those things quite as well.