December 30, 2008: Driving, Driving and More Driving

We left Baguio in mid-morning.  Considering we took Marcos Highway in but were taking the faster Kennon Road out, you'd think the six-hour trip would have been cut slightly on the return.  You would be completely wrong.  It took just over twelve hours on the return trip, owing to several factors.  While the Kennon Road was faster than Marcos (and seemed safer to me, in spite of its nasty reputation), the drive through Pangasinan and Tarlac provinces (before we finally hooked up with the SCTEx again) was hellish.  Every area that was even remotely populated was jammed to standstill proportions.  I'm not sure how this happens in the middle of the day on a Tuesday, although of course it was a national holiday (Rizal Day) and so it's not like anyone was really working.  Due to the length of the drive, there's not much to talk about aside from the couple of places we stopped on the way out of Baguio, but I'll cover that under the pictures.

The dog at the Baguio house, named Putol.  Putol means "cut off" (often used to refer to buhok, hair), and he had this name because his tail looked like it had been cut off.

The house also had two cats which seemed to come and go as they pleased.  I'm not sure if they technically belonged to the caretakers or if they were just neighborhood cats which happened to like this house the most.

One more look at some of the area near the house.

In the Philippines, cities and towns are subdivided even further - into ang mga barangay, which are basically like neighborhoods.  The American political equivalent would be wards like we have in Chicago.  You don't have to be a big city to have them, though; even in the fairly small towns we passed through in Pangasinan, they had barangay.

The Baguio house.  I realize it kind of looks like a prison in this shot, but inside it was actually relatively cozy, all told.

I waited the entire time we were in Baguio to get a really good picture illustrating what the house situation looked like.  I saw crazier things than this shot, taken as we drove out of town, but this does a pretty good job of hinting at the level of stacking that goes on.

The Kennon Road near its starting point, just outside the Kennon View observation spot.

More examples of houses in the hills, near the Kennon View.

The Kennon Road is also referred to as the Zig-Zag Road.  Have a guess as to why.

Road signs in the Philippines were sponsored with a surprising frequency.  (Often you would see what looked like a typical distance marking sign, except that in addition to nearby towns it would also give you the distance to the nearest SM City, the country's major mall chain.)

Awww - thanks, San Miguel Beer!

Terraced fields, as seen looking down from the Kennon View.

More mountains near the Kennon View.

Another look down into the valley, where you can see the road curving along the left-hand set of mountains.

And a panoramic shot of the valley with the road in the center.  So this is what we were right about to drive through.  I don't think it was as bad as it looked.

The Kennon View also had a little tourist trap area where you could pose in traditional Igorot tribal garb.  I call this one "Igorot Gothic."

An even wider pan of the valley.

The only sculpture on Marcos Highway was a Rushmore-esque bust of the dictator that was blown up by activists some years ago and is now just a frame.  Kennon Road, meanwhile, had this bad-ass lion.

The Baguio Lions Club commissioned the Lion's Head in the early 1970s, intended to mimic a natural rock formation nearby that resembled a lion's head.

A close-up pan of the Lion's Head.  As you can tell from the people standing at its base in the other picture, it's pretty big.

We were in the mountains, you may have noticed.  In case you didn't, I also took this picture.

Last mountain shot!  This pan (like the above picture) was taken from out back of the Lion's Head.

Part of the reason that the trip back took so long was a side trip of around two hours to Manaoag, an extremely popular Catholic pilgrimage site in Pangasinan.  The Our Lady of Manaoag statue is said to be responsible for a number of miracles, so naturally it draws a crowd of people hoping to have some of the miraculous works rub off on them.  Pilgrims make their way to the back of the church's second floor to touch the statue's back and say a prayer, and on this day the line was especially long, winding well outside the church.  As it was hot out, Alma and I waited in the car with the air conditioning on, but in the final analysis it took roughly 90 minutes for her mom and uncle to make it through the line because so many people were on hand.  Add in that Manaoag was 15 minutes out of the way and you get two hours.  Plus by this point it was getting to be mid-afternoon and Alma and I were hungry and starting to get a bit cranky at being in the car so long.  Anyway, the picture above is the ceiling of the church at Manaoag.  I had a picture of the Our Lady of Manaoag statue, but it was too blurry.

We eventually ate lunch at Chow King, which is notionally the Filipino equivalent of Panda Express but like every fast food place in the Philippines is really nothing like its seeming American counterpart.  It was okay, though.  Alma had me take a picture of this billboard outside because "Have another rice adventure" made no sense as a tagline.  Another?  Did I have one before?  Is this a play on words that only makes sense to Filipinos?

Trying to understand why traffic was just so lousy, I was almost cheered to see this sign, thinking that things would clear up afterwards.  As it turned out, the checkpoint wasn't open that day; traffic was just that bad.

Rice as far as the eye can see.

The town hall in Villasis, one of the many smallish cities we passed through that was nevertheless absolutely packed with cars.

A lot of signs on the trip for San Miguel Beer read "an iguel Beer" instead.  The reason appeared to be that San Miguel paints those leading letters in red and the rest in black, and the red paint doesn't seem to hold up nearly as well.

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