I love the Philippines!: My BFF's birthday at Pugad Lawin adventure camp

To borrow an internet and text slang abbreviation – best friend forever or best female friend or simply BFF. Mela is a very, very dear friend. She’s been my classmate since grade school. Though I am not in the same class with her, we spend a lot of times together in high school. I always joked that I never wanted to be in the same class with her as I never get to be the class president! By being in another section, I get to become a class president myself just like her. We briefly went to the same school in college, in fact both in UST and PWU! We’ve became even closer when she invited me to our prayer community, that turned out to be our PCF (prayer community forever)! I am ninang to her son, Aimyel and she is to my son, Robby. Her husband, IS, Bobby's ninong, is one of the nicest person I know (we don’t exactly like each other at first – but that’s another story) :-)! All I can say is that it is a blessing to have them as friends forever. Anyway, Mela decided that for her 40 something bday last Jan. 10 that she will celebrate it differently – via doing some “adventures”. So on her birthday – off we go to Pugad Lawin adventure camp.

The trip going there is adventure by itself! Well, actually there is a better road but the route we took has a very bad and narrow road (and kinda spooky). We passed through a pretty remote small town in Batangas and it was a little scary because it was just after the rain so it was a real dirt road! We finally got there and the adventures continue ….

Mavic, Mela and Me (High School Batch '82) naahh .. we don't look like we just graduated from high school, right? We do???

Day 1 continues ….
We had our lunch first, got settled on our camp site and got ready for our hiking/trekking activity. After series of ilog and slippery rocks along the way, we finally got to Ambon-Ambon falls. Siyempre pa Kodak-an, then we went to the Simbahan na Bato, then came back to the campsite for our merienda. Afterwards,rock-climbing activity! Ouch, broke my nails but it was lots of fun! Ang mga lola ng rock-climbing!! After dinner, we spend the night over a bon fire; and singing our heart out loud like crazy! We can’t even get our lyrics straight! After midnight, we finally decide na oras na para magpatulog.

Trekking to Ambon-Ambon falls

Si Lola Gigi nag-rock climbing!

Day 2
Breakfast first then adventure activities for the day are rappelling and mud sliding. Again, we had a lot of fun! At least we can all look back few years from now and said we have done these adventures!
Good place to go for big families – good family bonding time. Okay din for reunions – that way you can still challenge each other :-)