🇵🇭 ILOCOS SUR » Tagudin-Cervantes-Sabangan Road: A First-Time Account

I was the architect of this escape, but it was a decision out of thin air.

» This road is the reason why I became a travel blogger in 2010.

» The original adventure-high would always be the sweetest and the baseline—the enduring gold standard of my story telling and travel blogging.

🇵🇭 ILOCOS SUR

Imagine that? It took me 15 years to write a dedicated post about this road. I have written several stories that involve this road, but it's only after 15 years that I got the wisdom to put my experiences into words for an article dedicated to this road.

The old followers and readers of this blog would probably have known that this road, the Tagudin-Cervantes-Sabangan Road, started it all. It launched my travel blogging journey and my online persona as a travel blogger.

 ►  Backstory: It all started here

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Gawd! That was 15 years ago. I was careless, spontaneous, and hopeless romantic. Since then, this travel blog served as my personal diary—injecting personal life angles in my travel anecdotes and blogs. Diaries are meant to be personal, right?

This road is the reason why I became a travel blogger. Although I have been posting travel photos since 2006 through Friendster (the Pinoy Millennials' mainstream online platform back then), I wasn't considered a travel blogger. The details on how I became a travel blogger would be narrated on my next blog.

When I posted about my photos and stories about this road in a certain Facebook group in 2010, it became viral. That was my first viral post.

Social media aside, it was not about the shares and online visibility. The nostalgia I have with this road is rooted in a genuine experience that hit me hard and different. It deep dove into my soul that such experience would become a part of who I am now. It's the most cliché description, but it's also the most accurate—the truth.

To guide you in this story, I added an index map of our stopovers along the this road in 2010. See below.



This road influenced the purpose and reason why I am still traveling up to this day. I'm still looking for that adventure-high feeling of being on the road. That dopamine reward I had when I was 22 years young has never been duplicated by any of my travels after this.

The original adventure-high would always be the sweetest and the baseline—the enduring gold standard of my story telling and travel blogging. 15 years after, I still couldn't duplicate that feeling of adventure-triggered pleasure—one major reminder that the first time is the sweetest spot—and on why I keep traveling until now among other reasons in search for growth, meanings, and another sweet spot.

This road was part of our Vigan-Cervantes ride with my brother who was 20 years young then. I was the architect of this escape, but it was a decision out of thin air. Well, that's for another story—part of this series of rekindling my 2010 travel stories.

 ►  1 Bitalag Junction, Tagudin

With my 6-month-old Honda Beat scooter, I wasn't certain if the gasoline tank could bring us to Cervantes. Back then, there was no gasoline station along this stretch from the gasoline station in Tagudin to the first gasoline station in Cervantes. With the ascending road, the small tank of my Honda Beat could not supply the whole journey to Cervantes población. For this reason, I bought a purified water so that I could use its emptied bottle to store our reserve gasoline.

We entered the west end of this road via Bitalag in Tagudin at the junction with the MacArthur Highway.

As far as I remember, we did not stop in Tagudin aside from our gasoline refill stop. After a few minutes, we were already entering Suyo. That was also the first time I entered the town of Suyo.

 ►  2 Suyo Welcome Marker

🇵🇭 SUYO » Like an innocent child, reaching Suyo in 2010 was already a big achievement for me.

As we entered Suyo, we saw the 2010-ish welcome markers of Suyo. It's our first road stop in Suyo. Suyo had a welcome marker at that time that is similar to some towns in Ilocos Sur. It's a green metalic signboard which was an initiative of the late Governor DV Savellano.

Baringcucurong is the first barangay in Suyo after Tagudin via the Tagudin-Cervantes-Sabangan Road.

🇵🇭 SUYO » Apologies for the hideous color processing applied in this photo.

On the other side of the road stood another welcome marker of the town. From this point, you would see that the hills and mountains around are gradually rising as you go eastward.

 ►  3 Somewhere in Baringcucurong

🇵🇭 SUYO » I spotted a random body of water from afar.

We continued our journey along this road. My brother and I were on high spirits. We reached a place called Baringcucurong where we had our second stop along this road. The road has started ascending, and we paused for a break at a certain part of this road located within a forested area.

From where we stopped, we could hear a loud sound of gushing water. I thought it was a waterfall. I zoomed my digicam and found a moving body of water. We definitely could hear the loud sound of gushing water coming from that distant area. Well, 2 years after, I revisited this area; and I hiked my way to that body of water.

🇵🇭 SUYO » I also spotted that mountain with exposed soil.

From the source of the water sound, I saw a mountain with exposed soil. I didn't know if it was due to landslide or a result of human activity.

We continued our journey until we crossed a virtual zone that I considered outside the safe zone. The place was so unfamiliar which prompted me to make a decision. The adventurous young in me still wanted to continue, although half of me was so unsure and nervous.

 ►  4 Chico River

🇵🇭 SUYO » At a certain part along the road is a viewpoint near the Chico River.

We've ascended the road until I saw a curve with the view of a certain river called Chico. That was a great viewpoint. I couldn't help but to stop and document the beauty that Isaw. There's a good point along the road to take photos of the river. We left this viewpoint satisfied of the view of the river and the mountains.