Route 1, favoured by most Filipinos, involves driving from here to Calamba allong the south shore of Laguna then onto the Southern Luzon Expressway (known as SLEX). SLEX is being upgraded, and hence is in turmoil, so it is not a fast road yet, and as for the road from here to Calamba it goes through lots of towns and one's fastest speed is frequently that of the tricycles, about 15 m.p.h!!
But if you are going to the southeren part of Manila, the airport for example, or Alabang where we do our European shopping, you really have no choice.
Route 2 is to travel via Antipolo, along the eastern and northern shores of Laguna and that brings you to north Manila, Quezon City as it is known. Although no expressway is involved, the road is good, not that heavily trafficed and so it is a fastish route. Also the scenery is much nicer, less towns more mountains.
On the weekend of the funeral, see previous blog, we travelled up to Moncarda by Route 1 as it was 11 p.m. and by then all good Filipnos (and probably the bad ones too) are tucked up in bed and the roads everywhere are almost empty.
Coming back on a Monday afternoon, I decided we would go the Antipolo way, Route 2. Anyway we made a wrong turn or didn't make a turn we should have, and instead of a 90 minute drive we were driving for over a couple of hours. But we didn't realise we had gone wrong because we were driving in nthe most spectacular scenery I have ever seen here in the Philippines. Mountains and valleys, a really beautiful road. We only realsised we had gone wrong when our road turned into a goat track! Then was then a lot of backtracking and saking before we found the road we should have been on!
Now I know that road is there, I will go back, it is not that far from here, with camera and try to take some pictures and post them here. Probably in the New Year.
No comments:
Post a Comment