The Jarvii We are now visiting my fake aunt who moved back to the Philippines when she retired. She visits us back in the US once a year; she’s even come to see us when we lived in San Francisco. So O and S are super super stoked to finally see their Mama Linda’s house.
She lives in the city of Bacolod, which is a fairly small city by the looks of it. It’s also slowly growing with the new construction of different gated communities and other infrastructure items. Apparently many rich people live in this city, which makes sense with all the gated communities. Driving around here is the most intense in all of the country (and I’ve been to Manila, Cebu, and Davo).
My fake aunt took us to a mountain resort 30 minutes away called Campuestohan. It was at least 15 degrees cooler with a cool breeze coming from over the mountain and minimal humidity levels. The resort has a hotel, spa area, restaurants, wave pool, pool, kiddos pool, sprayground, zip line, ropes course, stupid hampster wheel thing, and famous movie characters for picture taking (re: selfie stick).
This resort is so inexpensive for foreigners, it is ridiculous! The entrance fee is P 150 for anyone over 2 years old (~$3)!!! This gives you access to all the pools and movie characters. You can also rent outdoor covered picnic areas, with the most expensive being P 1,000 (~$20)! The rides are all extra, with the ropes course and zip line being the most expensive at P 200 (~$4) each! So. Motherfreaking. Cheap!
Today we rented a picnic table and brought food for lunch. O spent as much time as he could in the wave pool (he’s currently dreaming about it right now), while S played at the playground, carousel, train, and hanging with her Kung Fu Panda friends. Hubby, my cousins, and I did the ropes course (which was quite dangerous because Filipinos). We were going to do the zip line but the line was too long and intermittent rain stopped us from going on (we literally climbed up there and waited nearly an hour).
Overall this resort was a great way to start our stay here. The weather was perfect–just hot enough you can enjoy being outside under shade. It has a little bit of everything to satisfy the needs of everyone in the family. And it was incredibly inexpensive. It’s probably not the most famous thing to do here in the Philippines, but it is a nice reprieve if you’re looking into something more family friendly.
