That One Time I Ate Lunch in a Waterfall

If you ask me, one of the best things about travel is the unexpected. My almost 40 years of traveling around the world has taught me that no matter how much you plan detailed itineraries, the unexpected almost always comes along for the ride. This can be a good or bad thing depending on how you see the double sided coin, but for the sake of this story, we’ll just focus on those magical unexpected moments. The kind that make you stop in your tracks, the kind that figuratively and sometimes literally, take your breath away. That is exactly what happened when I took my plate of authentic Filipino food and sat down with my family at a picnic table, in the middle of a rushing waterfall.

During our 3 week vacation in the Philippines, we were lucky enough to have my cousin and his wife show us tons of beautiful places throughout Luzon and Southern Leyte. Hands down one of my favorite places we visited during our trip was Villa Escudero Plantations and Resort in Tiaong, Quezon. It was about 2 hours from our hotel in Manila and what seemed like a true world away from the congested metropolis.

Villa Escudero prides itself in showcasing the cultural heritage of the Philippines through lots of unique experiences. There’s a carabao ride with musicians playing traditional music, there’s a cultural show, there’s delicious food, and a museum of antiquated Catholic relics. Aside from highlighting the beautiful Filipino culture, there’s also pools and a hotel to enjoy.

But for me, the stand alone experience that will forever live in my mind is having lunch literally in nature, at the Labasin Waterfalls.

We started off on higher ground, with a bird’s eye view of where we’d be having lunch. Rows of picnic tables sat in the middle of a river, with a cascading waterfall as the backdrop. I didn’t know where my cousin and his wife were taking us that day, let alone know that we’d be having lunch in a literal waterfall. To say it was all unexpected is quite an understatement.

After finding a picnic table, Gabriel immediately went to play in the waterfall. The rocks below our feet were slick, the water was a cool reprieve from the unrelenting Filipino summer humidity, and the view was unbelievable. Standing in the waterfall as the fast water slid down what seemed like a curved wall made it feel like we were constantly moving, even while standing still. Gabriel felt like he was surfing the waves and giggled probably the whole time we were there.

A traditional Filipino lunch was included, with some of my favorites like pancit, adobo, mangoes, and coconut water fresh out of the coconut.

And for dessert, one of my all time loves: banana cue.

One of my favorite Filipino sweets is banana cue, which is saba bananas with carmalized brown sugar on a stick. Needless to say, I was excited when I saw skewers of them at the lunch buffet. I grabbed a few so that Gabriel could try his first banana cue in the Philippines, but his slippery fingers had other plans. As he took a bite (which he not surprisingly loved), the piece of fried banana slipped off the stick, out of his hands, and landed in the water. He began to giggle, as a 5 year old who sees a banana floating in the water would, and excitedly told us all that his banana was swimming away. It grazed by my ankle in the water until it hurriedly floated downstream, which in itself is such an absurd visual, but exactly what made the experience one of those unexpected ones I’ll never forget.

Travel does that more often than not, serve us with a plate of magical memories that we’ll continue to talk about for years. Sometimes that comes in the form of not knowing what’s around the corner and traveling the paths unknown. And other times, it serves it up as the long lasting image of a banana floating away from us as we took a fresh sip of coconut water, sitting in a waterfall.