❝A FOURTEEN DEGREES NORTH LATITUDE, still disoriented, when leaving through the automatic windows of the Ninoy Aquino Airport to enter Metro Manila and I began to know what a true maritime tropical climate is.
Thermometer at 32°C, clear sky with high but crushing clouds, new and strange sensation of suffocation, but curiosity intact.
After taking that first blow, I was able to acclimatize in a taxi, in almost two hours of Asian traffic to cover the eight kilometers from the airport departure terminal to the apartment.
Thanks to a Filipino friend, he had managed to rent a mini-apartment in one of the twin towers of the noisy but well-connected Mandaluyong neighborhood.
Except for a few shrill bus horns in the early morning passing by the large lobby of the apartment block, nothing compared to the stifling humid heat of the Tagalog tropics. And everything is ready to move around Metro Manila.
Rented on Boni Avenue (named after the nickname of Boniface Xavier, decorated guerrilla leader during the harsh World War that the Philippines endured), which connects with the EDSA circular (acronym for Epifanio de los Santos Avenue), which in turn connects with the entire outskirts of the capital.
In front of Metro Manila, Boca Boni Avenue, of line 3, and of the bus stops, terminals of jeepney, those damn jeepney that there is no one who understands how and where they circulate, and even pedicabs...
The departure for Pampanga was organized for Good Friday with Grave in a comfortable vehicle with Filipino friends who will join the religious experience of a Holy Week with live crucifixions of which they only have, like me, indirect references●
