I had recently finished a trek to Pico de Loro in Ternate, Cavite. It is the highest point in Batangas and Cavite. It was my first overnight trek here in the Philippines and it was pretty awesome. Initially, I thought this was going to be a “walk in the park” plus a camping trip mixed in. After the “pre-climb” meeting, my whole concept of the trip changed. I found out that the trip wasn’t going to be as easy as I had initally thought. It would be challenging, tiring and best of all, exciting!
For the pre-climb meeting, the participants of the climb gathered at a local KFC. The leader of the group, AJ, had an agenda lined up for us. After introductions, lots of things were explained. From the description of the mountain to what the international distress signal is, we were fully briefed as to what the trip will be like. In my last post, I had wrote about a first aid kit and what every individual should bring while trekking in the mountains. This was definitely helpful and I felt more secure before hitting the trail.
On the day of the climb, we met up at around 5AM at a McDonalds on Katipunan. Taking two taxis, we picked up another adventurer in Mandaluyong and finally gathered in Manila. From there, we took a bus southwest to Ternate. After taking a jeep ride, we finally got to the start of the trail.
Now, I’m not that great when it comes to directions so I have no clue if we went south, north, east or west when following the trail. AJ knew the trail plus some of our group were part of U.P. Mountaineers so I just followed them. If you’ve never been here, it is best to go with someone who has. After paying some fees, we started on the trek.
Now, the path to the rest stop wasn’t too bad. It had a slight incline with a downward slope at some parts. Because I wasn’t at the head of the group, I had no problems regarding spiders. I don’t want to freak anyone out here but we saw some spiders that were about the size of your hand. They are the black, multicolor skinny ones that look freaky when you see them. As you can tell, I’m not too fond of spiders. The web these suckers make are pretty strong (surprisingly strong) so you’ll definitely feel it if you run into a spiderweb. AJ was at the head of the group and she had no problems with them. Remember, stay on the trail and you’ll be fine. The vegetation on the trail was interesting also. We saw really huge trees that fell over and plants that I’ve never seen before. This is a forest after all.
After a couple hours of walking, we got to Base Camp 1. The rest stop was definitely a welcoming sight since we were hungry and ready for lunch! There were others there just hanging out for lunch, composed of locals and other like-minded adventurers. For lunch, most had packed sandwiches and other small things to eat. A group member of ours had set up a hammock so we lounged a bit listening to some reggae. It was definitely a relaxing moment.
Off to the second part of the trek! The second part of the trek was definitely harder than the first. The incline was steeper and at one point, we had to scramble over some rocks to continue on the path. (Here’s a new word I learned! Scrambling is when you’re using your hands and legs to get across a certain surface.) It was a longer trek than the first part and we stopped many times to take a break. As the day drew closer to sunset, we began to focus on finishing the trail before dark. AJ didn’t want to go through the forest since it would be harder for newbies (like me) to go through.
Although we had a tough time getting to the top, it was all worth it! We arrived at the camping grounds just after sunset and it was amazing at the top! There were other people there already with their cook sets and tents out so we quickly put our stuff down to mark our spot. Once we got our packs off our backs, we took a look around. From this vantage point, you can see…very far…haha. Words can’t explain the landscape. With the fading light of the sun, it was just jaw-dropping.
After pitching our tents, we cooked up our meals and had dinner. Because it was my first time, I had only brought light-weight things that took little time to cook, aka Instant Noodles haha. I made some hard-boiled eggs, boiled water with some instant Pancit Canton and BAM!, I’ve got myself a dinner filled with protein, carbohydrates and salt. It wasn’t very nutritious but it did it’s job. On the other hand, just a meter away, AJ had cooked up lamb with rosemary and tomatoes. I was drooling. Fai, another groupmate of ours, had helped make this really nice concoction of wine, cinnamon and freshly squeezed orange juice… or was it pomegranate? Either way, it was heavenly. Thankfully, I was able to have portion of their dinner. Once we had dinner, we hit the sack and…TRIED to sleep.
I say “tried” because we were constantly woken up by the wind! Because you’re essentially on top of a mountain, it can get very windy. Our tent would would constantly be thrashed by the wind. THRASHED. It wasn’t the greatest place to set up a tent. This was probably due to the fact that we set up our tent close to the edge of the mountain. It wasn’t the very edge but it was close enough for the wind to get to it. Others had put their tents between trees and other foliage so I’m sure they had a better night’s sleep.
Thankfully, the little sleep we got was enough to power us through the next day. Waking up, we had a great breakfast composed of dishes like pancakes and strawberries, sardines and other Filipino dishes. After eating, we packed up and broke camp. We then set our sights to mounting the peak of the mountain.
Now, this climb is DEFINITELY steeper than what we’ve encountered in the past. People can do this in 15 minutes while others will take an hour. Think of stairs composed of grass and loose rock. I may be exaggerating a bit but that’s the incline. My girlfriend, Paola, needed some help with this one since she’s a bit afraid of heights. Nevertheless, we all got to the summit of the mountain in one piece.
At the summit, you have a 360 degree view of the landscape. Let me just give you pictures since it’ll be easier to explain.
After about a half hour on the summit, we proceeded with our trek down. Personally, I thought this was harder for me. I’m not sure if it was because of the particular muscles needed to go down or the amount of energy I had. Athough it wasn’t that bad, we did have some problems during our descent. For example, Paola had grabbed a piece of bamboo that had lots of tiny wooden spikes on it. They were small splinters but there were a lot of them on her palm. We stopped for a bit to get the splinters off. She was definitely a trooper! Another problem that we encountered was our decreasing supply of water. We had run through most of our water supply (around 3 liters per person) just at the beginning of our descent and so some were being affected due to the lack of water. It was nothing serious but we felt dehydrated from it.
After a couple hours of descent, we finally made it to horizontal ground. There were a few of us who went ahead to determine the path and look for water. Thankfully, we found a water source and Tim, another one of our group, went back to the others to relieve them of their thirst. We rested for a bit and took a break right on the path. We broke out our cook sets and decided to have dinner. I was really tired and accidentally fell asleep. After some authentic Spanish tortilla (one of our group was from Spain), we proceded our trek out of the forest.
We kept walking and walking and walking. It seemed like a never-ending stroll in the park. Unfortunately, night crept up on us and we had to use our flashlights to show us the path. I’m not too sure how long we walked for but eventually the ones leading the group found a small house with someone living in it. The man had offered to refill our water bottles and show us the way to get out of the forest. Hurray! Due to problems of getting home (no available buses in the area at that time), I got home around 3AM BUT it was still an unforgetable experience. The two things that I learned from it was be somewhat physically fit for the long trek and to make sure to bring plenty of water depending on how long you’ll be in the mountains/forest for.
by William P. Young. I love the idea of a relationship with Jesus instead of a relationship with a religious institution.