The hours went by.  It wasn’t cloudy anymore. The sky seemed unusually high.

Around us, all we could see was a great vast plain under the sunny, blue, late December sky. Against the the blue sky, there were white, fluffy, sailing clouds.

Sometimes the plain on either side was golden brown— the grains were ripe for harvesting. Sometimes the plains were green—different shades of green. The rice plants that had just been planted gave off a pale green color, so pale that it looked almost milky white. The rice plants that were beginning to grow grains were yellow green. The rice plants that were matured were deep green. Refreshing countryside scenery.

We kept on driving more, just following whichever way Waze led us to. Sometimes we would drive on sharp curves, sometimes on dirt roads. Amidst the beauty of nature, I kept wondering where exactly we were. And then—my heart suddenly jolted—my body almost forgot to breathe. As we drove past some small buildings, my eyes caught the address of one establishment—I forgot the name of the barangay and the town but these words struck my eyes—NUEVA VIZCAYA.  As in N-U-E-V-A V-I-Z-C-A-Y-A. It’s no wonder that the travel time was much longer than we expected.

For you, dear readers who are not from the Philippines, let me please explain.

We came from Sagada. Sagada is in Mountain Province, a part of Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR).  And then, Waze led us to Banaue. Banaue is in Ifugao Province, also a part of CAR. We were going to Baguio. Baguio is in Benguet Province, also a part of CAR.  Mountain Province (Sagada) is just north of Benguet (Baguio) But, we were in Nueva Vizcaya, a province in Region 2.  From CAR, we were led to Region 2, and from Region 2 (Nueva Vizcaya), we were being led back to CAR (Baguio). Waze was also weary, I guess. I did not tell Lee about this, he did not need to know it. I did not want to upset him. Lee is a man who can’t handle challenging situations gracefully.

We drove and drove more and the lonely hours passed while Jason Mraz kept on spewing out love songs from the blue USB. Lee and I would sometimes sing along.

There were broad, high, menacing-looking but lovely mountains again. No, no, no, the pictures here do not give justice to the real beauty that I saw. The actual mountains are infinitely much more beautiful than how they look in these pictures.

It was about 4 pm when we started driving through the woods. We were driving under the canopy of massive trees. The road we were traversing cut through at the middle of the woods. It was wonderful to see the branches of trees from the right side of the road that got entwined with the branches of trees from the left side.  Some tree branches from either side stooped right over the road, almost touching the roof our our car. The leaves were of different shapes and sizes, gracefully swaying with the breeze of that lovely December afternoon.  It felt like driving through the pages of a fairy tale book.

In one of those sharp curves, Lee told me that the car sounded funny. He said that there was something wrong with the tires, and the tires were making the funny strange sounds. I did not know about it, everything sounded the same to me but, of course, I just said “Yes, there’s something funny with the sound.” He then said that the first thing we would do when we reach Baguio would be to look for a car repair shop. I was sure that we would reach Baguio at night and there would be no open car repair shops at that time.

Oh no, I said to myself. The car can’t get broken in the middle of nowhere, not in this lovely yet far-flung place. I remained quiet.

I was about to admire the beauty before me again when I heard Lee once more.

“Beth, there is no GPS signal now.”