LA PRESA - CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG TRAVELLER

I never thought I'd be interested with buses and planes when I was little, when I was seven or nine. I would be even more interested with socializing and playing, just across the neighborhood.

Because I vomit just after two hours riding in a bus, I never swore to myself I’d be this far, that I will one day be thinking of just traveling and making money and fortune, learning new things, having acquaintances and connections all over the world.

I was growing and my interests were changing. At thirteen, I decided to give music a chance to be given attention. Idolatry pushed me, Taylor Swift was the image behind all my liking to music. She was young and so I was, that's why, I have had to go with her life story as she lit me up.

Now I smell my Buddha Beads, I smell summer when I take a sniff at it. I was in Benguet Philippines then, the summer of '15 is unforgettable. And I was 18.

I was in a training for academic requirements for the whole summer of the year. It was about to end then, our internship at the Luzon Morning Sun in Baguio City, a newspaper publisher. I worked there as their feature writer. Our last day ended like this, we were given a treat by our editor-in-chief. We went to MT. KABUYAO AKA LA PRESA, where the slopes were treacherous but very very beautiful.

 Hi sir Sam Bautista! Hope you'll be reading this one day :)

He was kind enough to do that, it's like we were his kids and he did pay for all that had cost us.

In front of me were big mountains, a revelation of the boundaries of the earth. I wasn't in the Philippines for a while, I was daydreaming that I was completely out of the world.

The Sulfur Spring

I remember when we went to "Badekbek Sulfur Spring." If my buddha beads smelled like oldies' perfume, the spring smelled like egg that has been boiling for 3 days. The color was gray, boiling, ready to gobble me up, all the time I have been imagining myself in it. Oh-em-geee.

We stopped for few minutes, put the scenic spot of hot spring in our eyes, then made our way back to Baguio. That's when I vomited at the car. Just because every way back to the city was curvaceous!

Let's go back to "La Presa," originally Mt. Kabuyao. It was called La Presa after the hit PH Teleserye "Forevermore". Now try to imagine a gliding camera effect where you get to see, in a motion of slow and momentuous event, picture perfect mountains, like you're roaming around, sitting there, and smelling the green leaves of the pine trees, cool, fresh, and clean.

You couldn't wait for a moment where you see yourself in a photograph, and each night you ask yourself, all these beautiful creations stay there, naturally wild and attractive.

At least, that's what I experienced. You can't just make a film here, but you can make memory like a film and it's all movie. 

I have been trying to put story in everything I do, and in every time, I always try to make it a fairy tale, without a curse, I'm letting myself grow and mind bloom just blinking in the foggy morning at Benguet province. I said, "I want to have a place here."

The fire has been burning in my heart, the pleasure, overwhelmed by the monstrous cliffs of the mountains, I smile and realize I also am standing in a cliff viewed by an innocent child on the other side.

Sometimes, the blank area in the view is a full view of my dreams, I feel it with exciting dramas, extra different people, my passion in achieving a life that's happy and successful can never be left behind.

The people here are busy merchants. They are already rich, they live in an area that shows the slopes of the world, treacherous but not dangerous. Together, they take leap into advertising their products, I like what they do.

I could be careless and carefree, but art surrounds me, meaning, I will always see the bright side of what others might not understand.

Now I want to tell my readers, they could explore all they want, the world has so much to offer and the beauty is being held in our own eyes. How we see them is even more important than the actual picture our eyes see, it's how we see them from the heart. 

Please follow me on my IG, from @meaganmangoma to @chasingmeagan.

Thank you!

Add caption It's a road up there.

Add caption

 So near I can almost touch them!

 Foggy Pechay Plantation!

Me on a yellow shirt. Such a messy get up! LOL.