Saturday is our first day trip out of Santa Rosa and we have plans to go to Villa Escudero Plantations and Resort, San Pablo City. 51Km trip should take 44 minutes according to Google and it's the weekend...surely it will be a quick trip. Wrong! We leave at about 8:15 and roll in around 10:45 (a few pit stops though including a Starbucks visit after "whining" by yours truly! Had to have a coffee and thankfully most everyone else is up for it.
Villa Escudero Plantations is a self-contained working coconut plantation, founded in the 1880s by Don Placido Escudero and his wife Dona Claudia Marasigan. Originally planted to sugarcane, the crop was converted to coconut by their son Don Arsenio Escudero in the early 1900s. Their children opened the estate to the public in 1981. From its humble beginnings, the resort has become a prime tourist destination for locals, overseas Filipinos and a wide array of foreign visitors to the country.
Waya imitates a tour guide from her last visit and in a very sweet voice says "On the left are coco-nut trees; to the left are.... coco-nut trees; straight ahead ....more coco-nut trees!" But the place is much more the coconut trees. We take a tour of the Escudero museum.
 |
The building is older and it was really hot there. After touring for about an hour it was just awesome to have our dinner down at the river and the waterfalls. Not at the river....lunch was served IN the river
 | |
| Eating with your feet in the water is....awesome |
The meal is served buffet style and our client/ host Paulo encourages us to just eat with our hands. He could be putting us on but is adamant we try, so ....hands it is. Pretty easy when you can just dip your hands in the water.
It is nice and cool so we spend about an hour after lunch just chillin' in the river
 |
| Sridhar, Vivek and me |
 | |
| What else. A big team picture! |
After lunch a raft trip
 |
| Luciana and me. |
 |
| Mark/ Luciana vs Ioana and Brian |
An finally a Filipino show with traditional singing, music, dancing and ceremonies.
 |
| Believe it or not these guys just jumped on. No hands! |
Finally took a trip on the way home to a pottery place. It is actually an estate in the middle of a very poor neighbourhood. The estate is beautiful and it is like an oasis.
 |
| Side road before the estate |
 |
| Restaurant open to large groups and reserved in advance. |
 |
| Nice pottery |
Amazing spot but hard top pick too much pottery when you have a 20 hours of flying home. One last pic was the boys photo-bombing Becky. I was great and Sridhar did such a good job of acting like he was taking THE perfect picture that everyone was able to creep in.
 | |
| Great pic...she had no idea until she looked at her iPhone! |
Long ride home .....Saturday night traffic is worse then Saturday morning but we make it in one piece! I was not a late night!
#ibmcsc philippines
Looks like you had a fun filled day! How was the rafting? I did something similar in Thailand.
ReplyDeleteThat lunch in the river looks amazing. It must be such a relief on a hot day. It is like natural air conditioning, your head absorbs the heat from the sun, your feet release it into the river :-)
ReplyDeleteThat "photo bomb" was one of the best moments I can remember. At least from the ones which can be publicly shared! LOL
ReplyDelete