Weekend Getaway: Day 1

After our long day at work, Rowjie and I were off at 7 AM. And since we were told that the Weekend Getaway crew would fetch us at 8 AM, we hurriedly went home because we still weren’t done packing our clothes.

When we were already settled, my heart wouldn’t stop pounding while waiting for the crew. The pressure’s on, I thought. We’d be shown on national television, we didn’t know where we were headed, we had no idea what kind of activities were waiting for us.

Then they arrived and filming started. Still with no knowledge of our destination, I pretended to be so sleepy while on our way to wherever when in reality, I was really anxious and nervous.

Rowjie and I had debates on our possible upcoming location. I was arguing that we might do the shoot somewhere in the South. Rowjie, on the other hand, thought we will be brought up North. We both assumed it’ll be a long land trip just like what we were told but we were wrong.

Much to our surprise, we ended up in NAIA Terminal 3. Allan, the program’s Producer, informed us that our flight would be at 10:40 AM and we will check-in our baggages with Drew Arellano along with his announcement of our destination. I hate surprises. As most of you know how sneaky I am, what I did was look up for flights around that time. Then I found out we were about to land in Dipolog? But wait, where the eff is that?

And so when Drew arrived and checked-in our baggage, I already knew that we were flying to Dipolog. I just didn’t know what to expect as I have no knowledge of where it was even located.

We were scheduled to do a lot of activities during our first day when everything was ruined just because of chicken mami. We were five-minute late at the boarding area because all of us were eating at the nearby cafeteria and were so busy that no one from our group heard that our names were already being called for boarding. It was just five minutes yet it made such a big impact on our itinerary.

The crew couldn’t reschedule the trip because the Tourism office of Dipolog was already waiting and WG’s reputation was at stake. And if they would, Rowjie and I can no longer join them as we only were allowed to take one day off from work. So what they did was reroute the flight to Zamboanga del Sur and had a 6-hour land travel (or so we thought) back to Dipolog, which is on its opposite side, Zamboanga del Norte.

Not only the crew spent much money for the new set of plane tickets, we also wasted one day worth of filming plus the anxiety and stress. According to them, the trip was one of the most memorable as this incident never happened before. Oh well, everything has its first.

From 10 AM, the flight was moved to 2:30 PM. And to forget that we were at the airport almost the whole day, we just played Pinoy Henyo along with Drew and the cameramen: Rey, Jeff, and Vanni. Allan and Marvin were both busy contacting the people involved with our trip. They were apologetic of all the delays. If only I could do something, I’d definitely help them but I was as helpless as they were.

The group landed in Zambo del Sur passed 5 PM and ate at a small carinderia just in front of the airport before our tiring land trip started. Most of the time, all of us were asleep. Some were even snoring out loud. My lips are sealed. I won’t tell that Rowjie was one of them. Mid way, we ate again in one of the carinderias they spotted along the way. Drew and some of the crew even consumed some Pilsen bottles to release their stress.

At around 1 AM, we finally arrived in Dipolog. We were too tired that when we had another round of dinner-slash-midnight snack-slash-breakfast, a staff of Karyll’s Grille uttered, “mga unan na tingin niyo sa pagkain.” True enough, I didn’t appreciate the sumptouous food served by the overly welcoming staff of the restaurant, not that it was horrible, as all I could think of was sleep, sleep, and sleep.

After a warm bath, the comfort of the soft bed in our own room (courtesy of Top Plaza Hotel) made me fall into slumber immediately. That was around 2 AM and we needed to have eaten our breakfast 5 AM for the start of the activities.