The Philippines

Day 2

We travelled outside the city of Manila into more of the jungle and took a river trip to an amazing waterfall called Pagsanjan Falls. While we were driving there, when we started getting closer to the river, men on scooters would drive along next to our van and knock on our window trying to get our business. They wanted to be our "boatmen" and take us up the river. We had one guy driving alongside us and knocking on our window for at least 10 minutes, until we finally reached the hotel we were going to, and these-want to be-boatmen are not allowed. We did hire official boatmen to take us up the river. Jason and I were in one boat and Ralph and Edy were in a separate boat with a boatman in the front and one in the rear. They were amazing. They paddled us up the river and when we came to rocks and passages in the river they would get out and hop from rock to rock pushing us up the river. It must have been such hard work, but they made it look easy.

This is Pagsanjan Falls. We sat on this raft and had 2 other men take us under the waterfall and into a cave behind the falls. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the falls are pretty impressive. Another waterfall along the way. It was so beautiful, the cliffs went straight up on each side of the river and they were covered with greenery.

After the river trip we travelled to a city called Paete, which is the wood carvers capital. We loved this carved Buddha which, as you can see, is taller than Jason. There were also many other incredible works of art carved by hand.
A Tricycle, which is a very common form of transportation. We saw a whole family driving along in one of these. The side car was filled with bags of rice and one small child. The mother, father and 3 other children rode on the motorcycle.
Posing in front of another very common mode of transportation...a Jeepney.

A video of our boatmen rowing us and hopping along the rocks..barefoot.