I’m not sure why, but the day we visited Kawit, the sun seemed hell-bent on melting us like candles to the ground. A minute after leaving the hidden confines of Hidden Tapsihan the group seemingly transformed into a gang of thugs with headwares, bandanas and scarves wrapped around our head to ward off the intense sun.

A rigid statue of Gen. Candido Tria Tirona, Magdalo Council’s Secretary of War, silently greeted us as we approached our next stop, Kawit Church. The sculpture marks the birthplace of the 1896 Revolution hero who sparked the mutiny in Cavite by disarming three guardia sibil. Directly at the memorial’s back looms the old church we came to see.

The heat was unbearable but still, we braved the blazing sun. Our collective heads had only one goal: to reach Kawit’s famous Hidden Tapsihan. We heard how freakin’ awesome the tapa was in that place so whether we faint in hunger or heat in trying to locate it, we do not care.

We crossed streets, passed alleyways, old houses, more streets, more cars, jeeps, exhaust, fumes, old houses, new houses, walls with graffiti, walls without, dogs, cats, slow pedicaps, zooming motorcycles and still we seem to be no nearer our prospect. Hidden Tapsihan seems to be, well, so very well hidden.

A few puffs of clouds were sailing over the cobalt ocean of the sky. The sun was unmercifully blinding as I tilted my camera towards the centuries-old ancestral house that the First President of the Philippines once lived in. Sweat trickled down my neck as I pressed the shutter once, twice, thrice.

The Aguinaldo Shrine, built in 1845, was not as large as it is now. The roof used to be made of thatch and the now enclosed ground floor was like the houses of its period, open and used primarily as a parking space for horse carriages. The family wing on the east side of the building was still nowhere to be seen, so was the iconic veranda where the Philippine flag is annually waved from during Independence Day.