Glamping and Short Trek in Daraitan Rizal

Time away from the city

A couple of months ago, me and my friends decided to try out a new activity that we never did before -- glamping. We would have wanted to try camping, but none of us have ever experienced doing that so let's start a bit easy. For this trip, we did not have anything planned in detail -- all we know is that we wanted a different scenery from the usual city vibe. What we did was rent an airbnb that hosts a glamping experience in Rizal.

Beer, Smores, and Bon Fire under the night sky

The view of the place is a perfect breather for us. Our accommodation had a river and mountainous view, with a very relaxing surrounding especially at night. During the night, the place is very quiet and chilly -- kinda gives a creepy atmosphere but I guess that's fine! The sky also looked amazing at night. The combination of weather and this view felt awesome.

For the rest of the afternoon, we just went around the area and prepared our food. For our food, we brought marinated meat, ingredients that we needed to cook sinigang (Filipino stew), rice, and of course soda and beer! Unfortunately, I was not able to take a decent picture of our dinner, so let me share with you the picture of our lunch instead.

Here we have rice, beef tapa, eggs, lechon kawali, and another deep fried dish (I forgot what is it called). This meal is delicious, but it made me feel dizzy after probably because of all the oil!

Fast forward to the evening, we went for a few drinks and s'mores near the bonfire after finishing our dinner. The bonfire was prepared for us by the host of the place (too bad I was not able to take a photo of the accomodation). I never experienced setting up my own bonfire, so I hope I get to experience that next time.

We called in an early night off since we were planning to trek early morning to see a good view of the rock formation.

Early morning trail

I've always loved the feeling of early morning, especially on a great weather. The air smell, seeing the sun, and looking at how bright the entire surrounding is -- it's surreal. Let me share some photos that I took during the trail. It was an early morning trail, so it was quite easy to see how lovely the place is.

I know that I'm not a decent photographer, but I hope I was still able to give justice to how peaceful the surrounding is!

My favorite spot is this one:

The moment that I saw this place, it struck me right away and it made me just want to go there and meditate.

After reaching the rock formation shown above, we walked just a bit further and decided to ride the tricycle going back. We were already tired and felt a bit lazy to walk again the same trail that we took. After going back to our place, we started cleaning up and got ready to go back to the city.

Overall, it was a fun experience despite not having much activity planned. The nature and company itself are already more than enough to compensate for the lack of activities!