koi

I'm just a small fish in a small corner of this big Laguna, and this is how I've been swimming it

27 November, 2015

S&R Nuvali

Sorry I have not taken a photo just yet.  S&R opened last November 14, and it was an insane weekend on the road to it.  Luckily, I was not one of those stuck in the jams on either days.

I heard...residents from the Westgrove side of town (who take the Nuvali blvd, which should go through the intersection to Solenad), were stuck for around 45 minutes just on that road, and so decided to turn back, and head for the S&R in Alabang instead.

I happened to be at Shopwise, where I overheard a cashier muttering that the reason their store was empty was that everyone was at S & R.

Nuvali via Silangan Exit

    Past the now famous Eton/Asia Brewery toll exit, shortly after the Cabuyao exit, is "Silangan".  To get to Nuvali from here, you will have to enter the Carmelray Industrial Park or Carmeltown.  That road is a wide avenue bordered by many big old trees.  Beautiful trees.

   In the middle of nowhere, surrounded by cogon,  surprise! A branch of San Sebastian College stands, its architecture gothic to mimic the original basilica in Manila.  Wow, San Sebastian here, who knew?

     Then you arrive in Nuvali, and if you have one of the appropriate car stickers, you take either the left or right side of the road. The right turn leads you alongside Avida Settings, and directly across Treveia and Xavier school.  The left one leads to this mass housing development, Avida Parkway I believe, or another Avida.  It is also next to the Venare development, which, if I remember right, is an "Alveo" development.  



    Heck, Nuvali's just too big and has too many villages within it, too many names keep cropping up!



     I can rant and rave about the loss of grassland (sugarland) "till the cows come home" (sorry!had to!), but there's no stopping "development", is there.



       Will they really still have a "home" in a few years...


     My seven year old asked..."are they free-range cows!"  I don't know if she realized how loaded this question actually was...because really, their "range" was just the other side of the road, where many houses stand.



     After the Republic Wake Park, straight on leads to Miriam College, while to the right is the main Nuvali blvd. Montecito is on the left, and straight on to the end is the Sta. Rosa-Tagaytay road.  And, sigh, the Ayala Mall.



     Ah...Canlubang.  So different now.

   *If you do not go through Carmeltown (and pass its Morningfields village, The Mills Country Club, you will go through busy streets through which there is Ceres village, a PNP camp, a Puregold, Jollibee...  and end up at the Canlubang rotunda, the one between two gates of Nuvali...on the pot-holed street where Camella Homes Dos Rios, and Wyeth, Universal Robina, are located.  This rotunda is NOT really under Nuvali's jurisdiction, but there is cooperation in securing it.

     I proved this once when I saw two men with what looked like homemade cannons climbing into the grassy hill along the rotunda.  I told the gate guard who said they will send the roving team, and they did.  

      The other street leads to the Canlubang Golf and Country Club, AND a route, albeit rough, up to Tagaytay, where the People's Park/Palace in the Sky and Tagaytay Highlands are.  Along the way is also an old Marcos mansion...it still stands, in ruins.  There is also a "Japanese tunnel", which I think I mentioned some years ago...and which was a destination among students looking for thrills (I believe there is a pool of water they swim in?
I would not feel too safe going through this road in the evenings though. It's quite isolated.

10 November, 2015

November

SKY OVER SANTA ROSA, LAGUNA
ACACIA

INCHWORM


INCHWORM

RAINBOW OVER PASEO DE SANTA ROSA-SOLENAD NUVALI