Villa Escudero

Last Saturday we had a Senior Missionary outing with a group of 25 from the Area and other missions, plus six from the Manila Mission. We drove about two hours south of Manila out into the beautiful countryside (we are so tired of the concrete jungle!) to Villa (Veel-ya here in PH) Escudero, a working coconut plantation started in the 1800s and opened to the public as a resort area, while still producing, in 1981. You can find out more on the internet. The family still lives there. There is a big waterfall from which they began producing electricity in the early 1900s, and many of the staff there is second and third generation, and they all live there. There are cabañas for rent, and a restaurant, plus, you can also eat down in the water by the waterfall, as I will post photos as evidence.  They have a large open-air pavilion where they performed an hour-long cultural exhibition, and we road over there in a carabao-pulled cart.  There is also the most unique museum I've ever visited. It had lots of great Philippine artifacts and natural history exhibits, but they've also received gifts from all over the world, so we were also treated to shrunken heads! One of the most unique items was a large picture of  Christ returning in glory, formed by the words of the New Testament in it's entirety. You had to use a magnifying glass to read it, and we couldn't take a picture, but it was amazing.

Auto-cooling our carabao

Sister Theler, one of our office missionaries

Another view of our carabao cart

I doubt if you'll ever see David barefoot again!

Our enthusiastic server

 

 

The lovely spread

Proof that we were here

View from above

The view above the falls from the side of the pavillion, and the cabañas which can be rented.

Pre-show entertainment, from the in-house music school

The rhythm section

They did dances from several different provinces

Spanish influence

This one was so much fun! Those coconut shells are their drums, and they strike them as they dance. Notice ones on their backs, too.

Cock fighting is a big pastime here, and was portrayed in this dance.

The granddaughter of an original staff member, getting her start in the troupe.

Part of the original outbuildings. We didn't take a picture of the residence, but it was similar in appearance.