24-May-2003 -- My wife & I started this trip from Manila in the morning of May 24, 2003 to the north aiming first for the town of Baliuag, Bulacan, about 100 kilometers away. Together with us was my cousin, Josephine from Manila who wanted to see her sister teaching Fifth Grade of the Central Elementary School in that town. I knew that from Baliuag, the confluence 15° North 121° East is about 12 kilometers away and the map I had says it will be a level trip. All four of us, Elsa, Josephine, Santah and I agreed that it will be a well-spent Saturday adventure to give it a shot, successful or otherwise.

A quick snack of spaghetti and French fries at McDonald first at about 10 AM, then we made a run northward through the national highway in the general direction of San Ildefonso. I kept watching my GPS already programmed to point to the confluence. When the bearing was about 90 degrees to my left, we started looking for a good right-bound road because the GPS said our destination is still a good 7 kilometers away from the highway. The road was unpaved and dusty most of the way but my 4-wheel drive Terrano did not disappoint me. I kept asking for the general direction to either Pasong Insik or Pasong Callos at every chance we saw people on the isolated roads. Suddenly my spirit was buoyed after seemingly endless turns when we saw this hand painted sign "Welcome to Pasong Callos". I knew then and there that we are going to make it.

My excitement rose to a crescendo in the last 200 meters to the destination when the distance readings of my GPS kept going down rapidly and the bearing was still up! - meaning that the confluence was just straight ahead of the road.

Presto! The GPS arrow pointed to just 20 meters away to the left of the roadside and we knew we were extremely lucky to skip a good hike which we were prepared to do the last few hundreds of meters if necessary to the confluence. We all stepped down from the car and I started walking slowly or more like waltzing until the GPS reading was dead zero, though it kept drifting the last 1/10th of a second which is well within the 7 meter accuracy of my Etrex. The confluence is on an abandoned terraced rice field, the mango trees about 100 meters north, a house about 100 meters west and the lucky road just few steps to the south. Instead of a flag we don't have, we planted the umbrella to the exact spot and for posterity we commissioned a local boy to take a digital photo of the four of us holding the umbrella, the first Filipino team to successfully visit a degree confluence in the Philippines.