Rural Skates

I didn't know the existence of a railroad in my own hometown until  I saw the photos of it from my hometown's blog site/ The Guinayangan Republic. I actually haven't ridden a real train running in a real landed railroad yet. The closest I've been were the MRT's in Manila and in other Asian cities I had visited. So during my most recent visit of my hometown I nudged my brother to bring us to the railroad site.

Since it was just a very short visit as usual, I wanted to maximize the time by hitting to see more than one to three destinations at once. With water falls, cave and the railroad in mind, he decided to bring us to one of the scenic barangays in Guinayangan called Danlagan . After the cave and the falls, we begun our rail road trip..

.. riding not on a train but on a rural railroad skates. That railroad was so busy with skates, we experienced a heavy traffic. It's a one way traffic, so we had to wait while the one ahead of us was loading or unloading.

But a skate coming from opposite direction, given that its load was lighter than the other _ the driver had to give way by lifting it off the tracks, waited at the side until the other had passed by, only then that it would be returned to tracks.



Either powered by a gasoline fueled engine or manually run by foot, the "skates" are actually makeshift wooden trolleys. They are intentionally made never heavy for the very purpose stated above.



It's a lot more than just a passenger vehicle. .

The ride was made more enjoyable by the scenic rural scenes we saw in every little barangay we passed by. .left to right and v.v.

elevated and open nipa hut

salon/spa anyone?

 clothes+grains sunbathing

I was particularly mesmerized by this sight..

..as we go nearer, the shape got more vivid..

. .but I got lost when we were actually passing thru it.

My favorite thu' was the vintage railroad bridge which is deserving of a separate post ( I shall..)

We got off at the end of the bridge ( we were the last to get off) with a plan to take the bridge back by foot and would just ride the next skate available at the other end of the bridge.

but we all got shaky by the height of the bridge off the water beneath and was worried about the delay we caused the incoming skates. 

So we rode the same skates that brought us in here to get back to our departure site.

The fare. For that joy ride, it was P50 for five of us (including return).

Well, told ya_ it's more fun to skate in the Philippines ;)