More pictures from Baler trip

Beautiful Mountains

Another view of that lake

A poinsettia growing in front of a huge house

This is the house where the poinsettia was growing.  You see big homes like this and then next to them will be bamboo huts or just tin houses with no electricity or plumbing and animals all around.

The caraboa is the main work animal here.

The view of the ocean from our room at the hotel.

More ocean views

The Lunds took us to a hanging bridge that lets the local people cross from one side of a river to the other.  They said it is been made redone recently so it is more stable.  Even so, it was pretty scary crossing.  The locals cross it like it was a solid roadway.

Hanging bridge

This is the river it crosses.  

This is a monument that was build to remember the local villagers who died many years ago when a tsunami hit the coast and they had to flee up into the  mountains. 

This is a parasitic plant that took over a tree many years ago.  The tree is totally dead now and only the parasite is left. 

We went inside the growth and traveled through to the other side.  It was really creepy.  I think my grandsons would have a great time playing inside.  Might even be some bats in there.

Beautiful huge bowl of flowers in the lobby of the Costa Pacifica Hotel.

Close up view.  

Only one place was there a sort of resort beach area other than the hotel.  These are little huts where you could sit on the beach and have a picnic.

Visit to Baler in January 2015

The Baler (pronounced Belair) Zone is the furthest area from the Mission Office.  It is on the Pacific Coast and very remote.  If this area were in the US, the coast would be developed with resorts and high rise hotels.  There is only one really nice hotel there called the Costa Pacifica.  We stayed in this hotel for 2 nights.  It was really nice while we were there.  In the summer, it is not so nice because it is really humid - very tropical.  The Pacific Ocean is warm here and that is why the land temperature is so hot.  No ocean breeze to cool things off. The weather was overcast while we were there which you think would make not good beach weather, but the lack of sun kept the temperature cooler.  We were even able to sleep with the sliding glass door to our room open and no air conditioner on.

We visited with Elder and Sister Lund, who were leaving for home the next week.  They had been the senior couple there for the past year.  We had a wonderful time with them.  We went because we needed to take a bed to Elder Gordon one of the Zone Leaders.  He is way over 6 ft tall and could not find a bed up in this remote area that he could fit in.  I hope we were able to solve his problem.  Elder Weber put the foot board on the bed up upside down and we brought an extra mattress for the bed which made it higher than the foot board so his feet could hang over the bottom of the bed.  Maybe Elder Weber is becoming part Filipino.  Just like the natives here, he finds ways to solve his problem with what he has and uses everything he has.  You know that old saying "use it up, wear it out, or do without".  That's the way things are done here.

These are pictures we took on our trip:

The road to Beler is through some mountains.  In several places you have to cross ONE WAY bridges that drop way off on the edge.  This is a picture of one of them.

Another view from the bridge.

Rice fields in the foreground and the mountains in the background.

Closer view of the rice fields.  They flood the rice fields using well pumps during the dry season.

This was a beautiful lake.  Don't know the name of it but it was really beautiful to see.