Rizal & Laguna Road Trip – Visita Iglesia

Posted in Travel on Mar 22nd, 2013 | 0 comments

Every year, a month before the Holy week, I and my friends usually make church visits to places not really far from the metro. I think this is the only time for us to make a simple road trip with a cause.

It is very important to plan the trip before engaging to a road trip. Last year we had the great Churches of Batangas, but this time we made visit to the old amazing churches of Rizal and Laguna.

First, in preparation to the trip, we made a research of old churches in Rizal and Laguna Province over the internet and made routes with the help of the online google map. We have to at least 7 or more churches to be visited. Some churches were excluded to our trip due to lack of time. Good thing we prepared more than 7 old churches. We only got one whole day to make everything as much as possible.

Here are the churches we plan to visit. Morong,Baras, Tanay of Riazal, Pakil, Paete, Pagsanjan, Liliw and Sta. Cruz of Laguna.

Since we’re from south, we started our trip in alabang. SLEX (southern Luzon EXpressway) and exited at Bicutan. We made use of C6 road which starts at Lower Bicutan to manila east road that helped us a lot avoid the monstrous traffic jam of edsa. But since you’ll be planning this for holy Thursday, it’s better to take edsa going to ortigas extension to lead you to Manila East Road. Manila East road leads you to the major municipalities of Rizal like Morong, Baras and Tanay.

rizal

The second part of the trip is from Rizal to the municipalities of Laguna. There are lots of ups and downs and zigzag roads that leads to Pakil, Laguna so you have to be careful with that.

laguna

Conclusion:

Trip is kinda hard especially the zigzag part. View during the trip is not that scenic thou there are some parts of the trip has a beautiful view over looking of Laguna de bay. Maybe on Holy Thursday, we’ll be doing the Laguna route and we’ll just add few more churches like Majayjay, Sta. Cruz and Nagcarlan churches just to complete the 7 churches.

Here are some interesting images of the church we’ve visited. Please click the image to enlarge.

: Since Paete is known for wood carving, amazing wood sculptures can be seen on this church.

: This is San Pedro de Alacantara church. known for having the image of the Lady of Turumba.

: Brick made church made this very unique.

: A very simple church facade but what stuns me here is the materials used to this church.

: San Ildefonso de Toledo Church is one of the declared national cultural heritage by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts along with 25 other churches in Philippines.