Home At Last!

Driving through the treacherous highways and roads, we made it home safely, and we are thanking the good Heavens for the traveling mercy.🙏 This, by the way, was our view from the lodge balcony when we woke up this morning. There was calm, but it was obvious something was coming. The light rain started yesterday evening when we checked in, and went on through the night, then stopped around 4 am.

While we wanted so much to stay, we realized the typhoon isn't something we should be complacent about, as it was forecasted to be strong (Signal #4 in Ifugao (where Banaue is located), and throughout Northern Luzon, including parts of Cagayan (where we were the other day). Hence, after having a warm breakfast in the morning, we checked out early. We didn't have any second thoughts about deciding to drive home. We wished to be in DD before the storm intensified, because we feel safer under our own roof. We even sought my brother's opinions on which route is safer to take. He suggested we drive back to Kiangan. However, we realized doing that would add more hours to our travel time, so we decided to go through Bontoc Mountain Province instead. At least we are familiar with it. We had a couple of stopovers to capture photographs of scenic views, buy some snacks, and fill our tummies, too. At some point, the hubby was driving too fast, and I had to remind him to slow down and not rush. It didn't help that we were receiving extreme alert notifications about the storm along the way.

We also encountered eroded soil and fallen rocks in some sections of the highway, so we had to slow down and check if it was safe before we continued. My apologies for the blurry shots below. They were taken in haste.😊

We felt the rain and wind had intensified when we were only halfway home. We were worried that there might be more landslides along the way. The hubby breathed a sigh of relief the moment we got through the most difficult areas. "Now we can have a meal!" he said, which I readily agreed to because I was starving, and my bladder was already complaining.😅 So we pulled over in front of the Route 101 Restaurant to pacify our hunger (will share about that on another day). By this time, the rain and gusts have weakened. An update from the weather bureau indicated that Paolo is exiting the PAR. Fantastic! We are thankful it is leaving very soon, and yes, we hope everyone is safe and sound in their homes.