Road to Camp N

   So I met the same Canlubang herd (I'd like to think) again this past week... The same herd in my Venare post, and most likely the same herd outside Nuvali, on the road to Casile. 

    This time on the road behind (beside?) Elaro (which I am attracted to for its hills and trees), toward Camp N.

     It has been sunny and bright here, and by 4:30 pm cool and windy. Temp read 25 but it felt more like 20. Tonight the moon appeared, full, bright yet diffused.

Note the Egret

Note the peak up ahead...Palace in the Sky (People's Park) and Tagaytay Highlands

That "Marcos Mansion", Canlubang

Zigzag down the ridge...

 Bouganvilla used to bloom here...

Down at Canlubang...

out to Nuvali

 Incredibly large crowds along the lake...

Makiling Sunset

From one of the Alveo villages in Nuvali, Canlubang, Laguna.
June 5, 2016

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.

Drive through Nuvali Blvd August 6

Montecito

    I cannot relate to those preferring--primarily because of the names--real estate developments bearing names that are the same as or allude to certain old, established, Makati villages.  I can relate only to the desire for space, nature, beauty, and well-developed, sustainably-developed, efficiently managed places.  So those new developments in this area with names like those are actually beautiful in their own right.  Why can't they have more original names?  Surely buyers don't buy simply because of the name.

    If you want the real...sort of equivalent of Forbes Park in these parts, this is it.