We caught her before she went back inside. “Excuse me, ito po ba daan papuntang Dampalit Falls?” I asked.
“Diretso lang,” she answered pointing the way ahead. I said thank you.
The road is narrow. Cars won’t pass here. There are no cars around. Only single motorcycles and bicycles are parked outside houses.
Following the concrete road in between lines of houses going uphill reminded me of the sitios I used to walk at in La Trinidad while preaching to the Deaf.
I ask another girl. “Ito daan papuntang Dampalit?”
“Sundan niyo lang po itong daan,” she said smiling.
When walking at Batong Malake, I often forget that I am stepping on the foot of a mountain. Being on the mountain seems to conceal the mountain. Here at Dampalit, you walk in between towers of cliffs. You see how elevated Los Baños proper is. You raise your head to look at those cliffs and realize you were living up on a hill all along.
At the falls, drops of water seem to stop mid air if you are patient enough to look at them closely and follow them from the point where they start to fall.
I wonder why it took me two years before I heard about Dampalit falls. Crazy how you could live near something as beautiful as this for two years and never know it exists.
We seek beauty out there when it has always been right here under our noses.