Lovely Palaui

My friend, Barbara, and I had been toying the idea of visiting Palaui ever since she showed me a similar photo as this one.

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When we finally got the chance to go there in August, we wasted no time. From the airport, we proceeded to the bus terminal in Cubao for buses bound for Tuguegarao. Yes, it was a night bus. We arrived Tuguegarao the following morning.

We had this for breakfast: Pansit Batil Patong! This is supposed to be one serving but I was not able to finish this one.
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To reach Palaui, we need to go to the town of Santa Ana, which is three hours north of Tuguegarao. We still have time to go other tourist spots since our Palaui trip was scheduled the following day.

Off we visited Callao Caves. We climbed 183 steps to reach the mouth of the cave.

There is a church inside. Remember that Bea Alonzo movie? There was a scene that was filmed here.
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The cave has seven chambers. This is just one of them.
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It is not difficult to navigate the cave. Look at my friends. They looked like they were strolling in a park.
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We visited churches on our way to Santa Ana.
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One church had large stations of the cross in its compound.
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Since we are already going north, we visited Aparri. This is the doppler radar of PAGASA.
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And this is where the Cagayan River, the Philippines’ longest river,  meets the Babuyan Sea.

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This gorgeous sunset greeted us when we reached Santa Ana.

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We called  it a day.

Off we went to Palaui the next day. Palaui is an island an hour away from the Santa Ana Port.We hired this motorboat.

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We climbed up a hill to reach the lighthouse. We took photos on the way up.

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This is the lighthouse.

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At the back of the lighthouse, we went down to a grassy area where we had the best view of the islands.

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Because of the large open flat space, we tried this camera trick.

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This is the view we loved.
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We went to Anguib beach after. Anguib is where Survivor Cagayan was shot.  The boat ride from Palaui to Anguib was one of the scariest I have experienced. It was raining. We can only see a dark horizon and an unending sea on the left side and uninhabited island on the right. We see no other boats around that my friend really asked, “Where are the others?”  Fortunately, we arrived Anguib safely and we spent some time swimming.

We dropped by Crocodile island when we headed back to the port.  It was called crocodile island because of the shape of the rock formation. Can you imagine the crocodile head in this photo?

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We returned to the resort we were staying, had dinner and slept tight.

The day after  was travel time for us. We took a van bound for Tuguegarao where we would ride another night trip to Manila. It was a long trip. We slept through the night filled with thoughts of this memorable trip.

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