Monkey

Today was a holiday in Bacolod City so we got to extend the weekend. Since most of the team hadn't yet gone to the Mambukal resort we decided to rent a van with a driver for the day and head in that direction; our friend Maricar Dabao was kind enough to make the arrangements.

I got to play tour guide since this was my second visit. This time we went further in the hike (to the sixth waterfall instead of the second) and we enjoyed the swimming and thermal (or as they call it "dipping") pool. The weather was great and everyone enjoyed themselves.

On the way home we took a detour and headed over to the Pandanon Valley Resort. We all enjoyed the drive through the scenic countryside and we played around in the river. Guillermo and I had fun walking up stream through the rapids and on the boulders. However, my highlight of the resort was when a ran into a group of monkeys near the parking lot...very cool! . Our day of running around ended by viewing "the Ruins" in town: an old mansion that was burned to the ground in 1945 in order to prevent the Japanese from using it to their advantage during WW2.

Tomorrow it is back to work: we have a couple meetings and I need to finalize a presentation I'm putting together for a lecture on IT Standardization based on an ITIL framework for Wednesday. We have a busy week ahead of us and next week it still looks like I'll be returning to Manila for the Disaster Relief work.