San Teodoro: Getting There
San Teodoro is a municipality of Oriental Mindoro. By jeepney, it is about an hour’s ride from the capital city, Calapan. There is something special about San Teodoro which I believe will lead to its development in the future as a tourist spot: waterfalls.
But first things first. How do you get to San Teodoro from Central Luzon? This is what we did.
Wednesday, 16 May: Bus from Tarlac to Dau terminal (P52/pax), one hour. Jeepney to Robinson’s, San Fernando, Pampanga (P24/pax), half an hour. From there, Dennis picked us up. We were spending the night at Dennis and Corrine’s place in Mexico, Pampanga.
We got there at past 9 p.m. After a delicious dinner of grilled tilapia and Mommy Limlingan’s special home-made atsara, I went to bed. This was close to 11 p.m. already. Teh plan was to get up at 3 a.m. and be out of the house an hour later. Dennis didn’t join us for dinner as he had business to attend to somewhere else. He got in at around 2 p.m.!
Thursday, 17 May: Three p.m. and we were all out of bed, doing our ablutions, getting into our clothes. After breakfast, we left the house at a little past 4 a.m., got into a jeep and traveled for 20 minutes to the “intersection,” the junction on the old Olongapo-Gapan road. There, we caught a bus for Avenida Rizal in Manila (P150 or thereabouts, I forgot). We were in Manila in an hour.
We got off at Doroteo Jose Street along Avenida Rizal and walked to the nearby LRT station. From there, we got tickets to Gil Puyat Station (P12/pax), approximately 10 minutes. Corrine, Ate Nora, and I got into the women’s car while Dennis got into the other car. Or so we thought. At Gil Puyat, I looked around for Dennis but couldn’t find him. A few minutes later, we got a text message from Dennis that he had to take the next train as the bag he was carrying, which contained Corrine’s and his stuff, couldn’t fit in the already crowded car. It was only then that I remembered: morning rush hour in Manila! And the bag was an enormous nylon bag which Corrine had crammed with clothes and <em>pasalubong</em>!
At 7.30 a.m., we had already regrouped, crossed Buendia to the JAC Bus Liner terminal, and had secured seats for everyone. (Window seat for me!) We were headed for Batangas pier. (I forgot how much!) The trip took an hour and half.
The pier at Batangas services the ferry boats that go to Mindoro. I’m not sure if Mindoro is the only destination. In any case, it is a very modern and clean facility, with several personnel roaming around making sure people know where to go. Even the porters and the vendors were very helpful.
At this point, I should have taken pictures but I was feeling winded and disoriented. I had very little sleep, less than my usual eight hours; I’d gotten up in the early morning; I’d been in cramped buses since then, and I had I had not worn a watch. Interesting that not wearing a watch even for a few hours could have affected me so much!
We bought tickets for the Super Cat ferry boat that would take us to Calapan (P240/pax). The trip took 50 minutes and I hated every second of it, mainly because it was an enclosed space. I couldn’t feel the wind, I couln’t experience the waves, and I couldn’t smell the sea. For the trip home, I swore I’d take the smaller ferry boats, the outriggers.
When we got to Calapan, we took a tricycle (I forgothow much!) to the jeepney terminal where we could get a ride to San Teodoro. This was close to noon already and the sun was terribly beating down on us. Add to that the feeling that I’d been traveling for an entire week! At least, this was the end of the line. The jeepney fare was P25/pax and the trip took close to an hour.
By this time, I was really exhausted. On the way, the jeep stopped at a fruit stand where Corrine and I bought mangoes and pineapples. yes, you can actually request the driver to stop for a few minutes. After that, the road just went on and on and on… It was strange weather: I could feel the alternating hot and cool currents of wind as the jeep sliced through the humid air at 90-100 kph. It was so humid that you could actually smell the plant life oozing oxygen into the air.
Finally, the cemented highway ended but the jeep continued on onto dirt roads! We had reached San Teodoro! The jeep had entered the backroads and was delivering people right off at their own doorsteps! Amazing! And this is a huge jeepney that seated 20 people easily. Finally, the driver asked us where we were going — or more precisely, to whose house we were going. Corrine mentioned the name of her dad and after a few quick turns, I found myself on a street corner gazing up into a 50’s styled house with a billiard hall on the ground floor.
We had made it!
