Wawa Dam

One boring Saturday afternoon, a friend and I decided to go to Wawa Dam. I've been meaning to go there since summer when I've read in some blogs that its a nice place for cooling down under the heat of the summer sun. Although I wasn't able to go last summer, I guess its better late than never.

It was easy enough to get there, the first is an FX ride from Gateway Mall in Cubao where I met up with my friend. You tell the driver to drop you off at Brgy. San Rafael, (our driver told us its also called "Eastwood", should not to be confused with Eastwood the chic business district though) Most blogs would say it's an hour drive from Cubao but it took us about an hour and a half due to traffic.

Once in Brgy. San Rafael (or Eastwood, if you prefer) you hail a jeepney that says Wawa Dam on their sign boards, or you can also take a tricycle instead, we opted for the more budget friendly ride though. Once the jeepney drops you off you'd be hiking for a bit. The first part of the trek would be quite unsettling, especially for my paranoid friend who felt like we were walking through a slum area. Not to worry though, people didn't pay us visitors any mind as we passed. Just a bunch of promdi people doing their day to day business. It's in this area you can find some carinderia to eat at if you didn't bring any food.

It would take about 20 minutes for you to reach the dam itself but you wouldn't wanna hurry though, once you get past the food, vegetable, and fruit stalls you would start to hear the sound of the river rapids as they fall through the dam. It's in this part of your trip that you must savor and enjoy the most, you feel so far away from the stresses of the city yet it didn't take you the whole day to get there.

Take in the great views of the gorge you are in, said to be separated by a giant man named Bernardo Carpio of Philipine Folklore. On your left far below would be the river while on your  right, the high cliff would sometimes become a tunnel roof above you and turn your path into a sort of cave.

A little further on you'd see the dam itself. Its quite small, my friend thought it would be as big as the one from the movie Charlies' Angels Full Throttle. It's actually not in use anymore, there are some talks in the government whether to resume it's operation due to the ongoing water crisis.

Because of the strong current that day, no one was allowed to go down to the foot of the dam where people can just lie down and bathe in the shallow water. During summer, the residents would put small cottages there where you can have picnics too.

Beside the dam is a sort of building which I've been seeing on TV and one of the reasons I really wanted to see the place. One is a music video of Mark Bautista, his remake of the LeAnn Rimes song I Need You shot some years before. A more recent one is for a plug of one of my favorite TV documentaries i-Witness from GMA 7, you can view the vid here.

From that building thing, we walked further on where some cottages for rent are scattered throughout the river bank, I wasn't able to ask how much though since we didn't have any food to bring for a picnic anyway. We asked this man where we could swim and he told us it would be further up river where there's a small falls and the water is clearer.

We were quite hungry by then given that we didn't eat lunch before going there and that we didn't bring any food, we decided to just ditch the swimming part and just enjoy the view and take some more pictures. Once we were satisfied we went back to the carinderia stalls to eat.

For about a hundred bucks for the both of us we felt satiated and so we headed back to the jeepney drop off and took the same route going to Manila, just ask the jeepney/tricycle driver to drop you off at the FX terminal going to Cubao.