Toyota Innova Road Trek Year 2

Have you ever gone through a place or an event and suddenly had a strange feeling that you’ve been there before or that you’ve done it before? If you had, it’s called déjà vu and you don’t need to be freaked out because it’s quite a common occurrence.

I’ve been personally experiencing it a lot lately especially when Toyota Motor Philippines took about forty motoring journalists to Mindanao for their second annual Toyota Innova Road Trek. Now, the Road Trek is a déjà vu itself because about a year ago, Toyota took us to Iloilo, where we were grouped into teams and drove from the capitol city to Caticlan to catch a ferry to Boracay.

Along the way, we were tasked to do several assignments, earning points for our team for each successful assignment. The team with the most points during our sortie in Visayas was Team Auto Review headed by Ron de los Reyes while Team Philippine STAR composed of our motoring editor Dong Magsajo, tri-athlete and columnist Andy Leuterio, advertising and karting ace Jeff Reyes and yours truly, managed a respectable fifth place finish. Of course, with the competitions over and done, we hit the beach for a whole day and everybody had a lot of fun.

City of Friendly Smiles

This year, the Toyota Innova Road Trek started off at friendly Cagayan de Oro City where we were surprised at the airport parking lot to find our waiting Toyota Innovas carrying inflated rubber rafts on their roofs. After smiling a lot at the raft-equipped Innovas (Look, mom! The Toyota Innova has an airbag on the roof in case you flip one over!), we drove to Toyota Cagayan de Oro, Toyota’s multi-awarded dealership in Mindanao, which is headed by the charismatic Betty Lu.

Our throng of journalists from Manila, Davao and Cagayan de Oro were treated to a morning of native dances, warm smiles, good food and treasure hunting. Actually, we hunted for the number corresponding to the awards that the dealership got and we had some difficulty doing so with the number of awards Toyota Cagayan de Oro has won and has treasured over the years. After being treated like VIPs at the dealership, we then drove to the Cagayan de Oro River for some white-water rafting. (Déjà vu; see "The Adventures of Go Girl and La-Z-Boy", The Philippine STAR, July 13, 2005)

As most of our loyal readers will recall, I never learned how to swim and my personal motto in life is "Anything with wheels, anywhere on land, never on water." After I volunteered my services to TMP’s Elijah Sue Marcial to drive the Innovas to the pick-up point (déjà vu) to no avail, I geared up (vest, helmet and T-paddle) and reluctantly joined my team mates — Dong, Jeff and Sunshine TV/Motoring Today/Auto Focus ace camera man Matt Mallari to our raft.

Since it was summer, the water level and the swells at the river weren’t that high, so I wasn’t as fearful of the water as I would normally be. In fact, I was beginning to enjoy white water rafting, especially when we were leading other rafts in a race to the next stop. Dong, Jeff, Matt (Or is it Matt and Jeff?) and I were paddling away as a cohesive team, and by the time we reached our lunch site, we felt as if we had given ourselves a strenuous upper body workout.

We earned valuable points for our second-place finish, and earned ten more points for another rafting contest before lunch, where we paddled against the current, flipped the raft at an assigned still water enclave, righted it and went back on it before the 4-minute time line. And that included us beaching our raft on the rocks and me drifting away from our raft after we flipped it over. After lunch, we chugged up more points by jumping from a 15-foot rock to the still water below (Look, mom! I did it!) and by catching orange ping pong balls with a net basket while floating on the river (Look mom, I didn’t catch any! In fact, they had to catch me before I floated away!). Tired from our river contests, we drove to the Mapawa Forest Reserve where we gamely dropped water and sand bombs at a target from a Zip Line and rappelled down with a spoonful of cashew nuts in our mouths. (Extra Challenge, eat your heart out!) Needless to say, a lot of us retired early that night.

Destination Davao

Morning found us driving to the Del Monte Farms in Bukidnon for breakfast. The large pineapple plantation served as an impressive backdrop for a photo shoot of the Toyota Innovas, with majestic mountains in the background. After breakfast and the impromptu photo shoot, we drove to Malaybalay, where we stopped for some rest and refreshments at a local hotel and then to the View Point (déjà vu, again), through the BUDA Highway and to Davao del Sur for lunch at a mountain resort. Along the way, we were tasked to count Toyota Innova streamers to get more points but we think that we were told to do so to keep us focused on the trip, er… road trek.

We reached Davao City by 5pm and rolled into the Toyota Davao dealership where we joined local loyal Toyota owners in a motorcade of about 40 Innovas. Toyota Davao has wisely banded the Innova owners as a club, aptly called the Club Innova and sponsors the club’s road treks around Mindanao. After our convoy snaked through the major avenues of Davao City, we checked-in at our rooms at the Marco Polo Hotel, freshened up and then went to a party hosted by TMP and Toyota Davao, which was emceed by the beautiful Cheska Garcia.

The next morning found us riding a ferry to Pearl Farm, a beach resort nestled at a beach cove in Samal Island. Pearl Farm is a major tourist attraction, and as we approached the sandy beach, we were smitten with the paradise-like setting of the resort and we understood why tourists flock to this resort annually. A heavenly lunch awaited us at the arrival dock, followed by an afternoon of camaraderie while massage services where also arranged by Toyota for those who bodies were still aching from the activities of the previous days. Of course, with the competitions over and done, we hit the beach for a whole day and everybody had a lot of fun. (Oooh, major déjà vu! Didn’t I just write that?) Our last night was brightened up with awards (Team Cagayan de Oro won with defending champion Team Auto Review in second and Team Philippine STAR in fifth, again. Déjà vu!), reggae music and a beach party hosted by the lively and lovely Nancy Castiglione.

And that’s the thing about the Toyota Innova Road Trek. Not only do we, as motoring journalists get to evaluate the Innova on the road (which, by the way, averaged about 8 kilometers per liter of diesel fuel with its D4D engine as per the on-board computer and was comfortable to ride in as well as to drive over long distances) and have fun while we’re doing it but we also get to see the natural wonders and the beauty that our country has to offer. Toyota has done the country an honorable deed by promoting not only its automobile industry, but the country’s tourism industry as well. Here’s to more road treks in the future — and the déjà vu that comes with it.