Luzon Islands
Manila
A much better day for a flight. Today we're flying down a lot of Luzon to Manila, the most densely populated city in the world at almost 42,000 people per square kilometer. That's about ten times the density of Toronto, nearly three thousand times the density of Timmins, and at least 2,100,000 times the density of Baffin Island. Makes you think. And yes, the place is connected to manila envelopes. Manila Hemp, technically more of a banana, comes from the area and has exceptionally strong fibres for making ropes and big interoffice envelopes with little red string closures and all of the names crossed out because it has gone all the way around the organization fifteen times. That's just how durable manila hemp is.
A lot of sand dunes around here.
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Our track today will go through the mountains, but to start at least we'll stick to the coast.
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Okay, time to head inland and see how bad the clouds get. It's quite often cloudy on one side of a mountain range.
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Pretty cloudy.
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Baguio Airport. According to the internet, "Its short runway, frequent low visibility and deep ravines at both ends of the runway continue to challenge pilots greatly, especially when it comes to landing." Ordinarily I wouldn't pass up such an obvious challenge, but I'm on a schedule.
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Better drive around that mess.
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The Science City of Muñoz. They do research on agriculture here. I think they're generally in favour of it.
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Mount Arayat, so far an extinct volcano. The fairy of this mountain, diwata Maria Sinukuan, doesn't play nice with the fairy of mount Pinatubo, Namalyari, 46 or so kilometers to the west. I would put my money on Namalyari; in 1991 Pinatubo blew its stack killing 350 people right away and hundreds more as disease broke out in the evacuation camps. Typhoon Yunya was happening at the same time which made for a great deal of toxic mud. So definitely, Namalyari is the one not to piss off.
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Rice paddies are everywhere here. We missed the Banau Rice Terraces because of the way we came down the mountains. Maybe next time.
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And that brings us to Manila. This place is just wall-to-wall buildings. Not my cup of tea for travelling, but if you're into shopping for bargains this is the place.
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So here we are at Ninoy Aquino airport for the night. Funny story. Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino was a Senator, Governor and all around opponent of Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos had him assassinated as he stepped off a plane at this very airport, called Manila International at the time. Okay, not really a funny story.
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