Agnes invited the Bisdak gang over to her hometown at Bukidnon for a weekend getaway last July 25-29. The moment she told us about it, we booked tickets the next day. That’s how excited we were. It was a chance to visit a place I’ve never been to before, and escape, albeit for just a few days, from the nasty city that is Manila. I never thought I’d see nature at its finest here in the Philippines. To a certain extent, it’s comparable to New Zealand! Haha. To those of you who are not familiar with Bukidnon – you can read more details over here, while I move on with my recap of Day 1.

Our flight was at 5:45 in the morning via Air Asia (Zest Air). We were all excited, as I mentioned. Most of us didn’t get to sleep at all because we had to leave for the airport at around 3:30 AM, and we were all on night shift at work. The flight was a little rough because of the bad weather, but we managed to safely land at Laguindingan Airport in Misamis Oriental. Our friends who were coming from Cebu were unfortunate because their plane had to go back to Cebu due to poor visibility by the time they got near Misamis.

We took a rented van and braved through strong rains for around 2 hours, until we got to Bukidnon.

And I fell in love with Cawayanon, the private golf course owned by Del Monte Philippines, and the paradise our friend Agnes calls home (she’s one lucky girl I swear!). I particularly fell in love with the cold weather, the fresh air and the lovely lake in the middle of the golf course!

Does this look like the Philippines to you? It took a while to take all of the scenery in.

After we dropped off our bags at Agnes’ house, she took us for a quick drive around the neighborhood.

We also passed by the pineapple plantation, but I’ll show you photos of it in another post. As it was raining hard earlier, the road was muddy and it was a challenge to drive through potholes because our car could sink in the mud! Getting past all those and reaching home safe was the first adventure of the weekend!

When we got back, Tito gave us a quick tutorial on golf! It was the first time for all of us (except Agnes of course) to play! I previously thought that golf was the most boring sport ever – and I stand corrected. We were all hooked, and we wanted to keep playing, but time won’t let us as it was already getting dark.

When we got back to the “cabin”, we were greeted by this –

Aww man! Lechon!!! It was a feast! We also had dinuguan, fresh salad, and local ice cream for desserts. I was so full that all the exercise from playing golf was useless. Haha.

That’s alright though because we ended the evening playing bowling! We had the bowling alley all to ourselves! We played until our arms felt like they were falling off.

After three games, and a championship round (with Dean proclaimed as the champion bowler), we went home tired but satisfied. It was a full first day! They say time flies when you’re having fun – but this time, time didn’t rush. We got to enjoy every minute of our stay in Bukidnon.

Day 1 was a great start to our extreme adventure in the land of pineapples! 🙂