Cool Mountain Air | Baguio City, Philippines

Baguio City, Philippines

This place was Average

Gardens at Camp John Hay

From Cebu Kelly and I flew to Clark and hoped on a bus for a 6 hours ride up into the mountains to Baguio. We were chilled when we arrived, which was a nice change from the temperatures in the mid to high 30's that we had been dealing with in Cebu. It was a bit of a nightmare finding a place to stay; most places were full or way out of our budget. It is a busy place, but a very nice man from the tourism office at the bus station drove us around and made sure we found a place to stay.

Our first night we had enough time to head to the big mall for a bite to eat, and did a bit of wandering around. Our first full day there we got up and headed to Camp John Hay- and old American military camp where the officers stayed. There were some beautiful gardens at the main residence, and we felt very at home wandering around amongst the pine trees; there was even a mock cemetery of negativism to rid oneself of negative thoughts. After wandering through the camp we wanted to head to a nearby mine for a tour, but none of the taxis would travel the rugged road, so we opted instead to head back to the mall to join the thousands of locals all rushing to watch Spiderman 3 on the opening day. We had to line up for over an hour to get seats (even though 3 of the 4 screen were showing the show on constant rotation), but it was worth it... a great movie; four days befor it opened in North America!

The next day we hoped aboard a bus for a seven hour trip winding up into the Cordillera mountains of central Luzon.