Wawa Dam

This trip was planned outside of work. After the layoffs, the Frontend Team wanted one last proper outing together — a last hurrah for a group that had built something real in under a year. Wawa Dam in Rodriguez Rizal was the destination. Most of us had never heard of it.

Low expectations felt appropriate.

We met first in Cubao. The usual mix — some people on time, late arrivals sending ETAs, the banters already going before everyone was even in the same room. The van ride to Rodriguez Rizal was its own event: random conversations, dating app swipes narrated out loud, and a running joke about an AI filter that kept giving people dramatically different faces. No photos survived from that leg. Some things are better left as stories.

Rodriguez Rizal is about two hours from the Metro on a good day. Crowded van, AC that was technically on, summer heat that disagreed. The destination made it worth it.

We arrived at the Airbnb and immediately hit a decision: Lakan had not made it yet. The afternoon was slipping toward 4pm, and waiting meant losing daylight at the dam. We decided to head out without him — tricycles to the entrance, and we’d fill him in later.

Some random photos with the Frontend Team arriving on the Wawa dam entrance!

I had low expectations. Rodriguez Rizal is not exactly on the tourist map, and nothing about the trip so far had suggested we were heading anywhere remarkable.

Then the mountains appeared.

The entrance opens into a stretch of rocky banks lined with green ranges on both sides, a river cutting through the middle of all of it. The kind of scenery that looks out of place two hours from Manila. We gathered as a group, took a full round of photos — selfies, group shots, the whole documentation — before heading in.

We started the walk with street food: kwek kwek, fish balls, and palamig. A reasonable way to open an almost-kilometer walk in summer heat.

The further in we walked, the better it got. Rocky mountain walls packed with green trees, hints of river running alongside the path, the kind of afternoon light that comes right before sundown.

And then the dam itself — water dropping down over the rocky banks. We stayed close and took it in for a while. None of us had expected something this good.

Past the dam, we spotted a boat rental on the other side — 100 pesos each for a trip down the river ahead. We paid immediately.

The river was blue-green and calm. Mountain ranges rising on both sides, forest thickening the further we got from the dam. People were swimming along the banks. Cabins sat scattered between the trees. You could reach out and touch the water as the sun reflected off the surface.

For a while nobody really talked much. We just looked.

We headed back to the Airbnb as the light dropped. Lakan had arrived by then.

The night settled into the kind of evening that earns a trip its reputation. One of the laid-off teammates had a birthday — someone showed up with free pizza. Somewhere along the way we also ended up with two whole chickens, several bottles of alcohol, and hours of the kind of conversations that only happen when the people in the room know they won’t all be in the same place again for a while. Stories, banters, running jokes that got less coherent as the night went on, and an unreasonable amount of trash talk that nobody is apologizing for.

We stayed up longer than was reasonable and ate more than was wise.

Exactly what a last hurrah should be.