When itchy feet strikes… the
result would be either lounging on a beach or climbing a mountain. And since we
just had our dose of summer in December of course we had to balance the scale
thus my first climb for 2015! (happy dance)
Cath out of the blue sent message
on FB chat informing of such hike she said she wanted to do Mt. Balagbag
(located in Rodriguez Rizal with 777MASL) this time. Me seeing that the IT
which is Saturday was not really interested because Hello! Im the only one in
our group who works on a Saturday! But still wasn't strong enough to resist
checking out links.
Do I wish to join? ABSOLUTELY! Will
I file a leave to accommodate the climb? NO! (they said im a workaholic, I say
just being responsible)
Still I cant resist joking “Sabado
ba talaga? Hindi pwede Sunday na lang para sama ako?”
Not really thinking they would
adjust to my schedule – I was surprise to receive a text saying that they are
willing to adjust the schedule to accommodate me (awwww). So Sunday dayhike it
is. :)
Since we’re all travelling from Cavite call time is very early, we were 3 hours away from Quezon City where we
will be catching the bus going to Tungko.
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| IT ba ikamo??? |
We started ascending at 9am (we had to stop at Tungko and have our breakfast before the climb) the sun being
up already kind of makes the bare trail a little harder because there is no
coverage from heat.
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| Bare Trail |
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| At the Gate |
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| Groupie! Regie, Ey, Pia, Tin, Feng. Cath anf Myself |
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And because it a 2/9 in
difficulty level we didn’t get a guide. Just follow the trail and everyone else
and you will not get lost we didn’t. It was really easy, an hour or two and we
were already there not to mention the stop for photo ops along the way so yeah,
no worries…
Not until we decided to visit
Maranat Falls and that’s where we “almost” got lost :p
The path going to the falls is
really tricky with more than one trail and in our case asking the locals got us
confused at some point. So Reggie the only guy in our group of 6 girls had to
leave us while resting to find the correct trail.
Need to review our Botany Lesson…
One local said to look for the
twin Anahaw Tree “not so far” from where we are indicating that we are near the
falls. Again by local standard “not so far” is equivalent to 2 hours of
trekking. And its seems like none of us remember how an anahaw tree looks like
so we end up being disappointed when ever we come up with an “anahaw wanna be”
tree.
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| Kambal na Anahaw |
Traverse?! Seriously???
Not being a full pledge mountaineer
I have no idea on what “traverse” is. I had to look it up on my phone dictionary
as it says “to go over the side, cross or climb over and down the other” In tagalong
(my interpretation at that time being tired from walking under the scorching
heat) “akyat-baba”. I was like ooookay its not like I could back out or
anything but after minutes and hours on the trail I was starting to not like
it.
But then God has really a way to
shut me up from my silent rant on how tired hungry and thirsty I am because
along the way we came across some people – boys actually who carries sacks of charcoal (yes
plural dahil more than one) they need to transport it all the way to the market. So again I have no
reason to complain because compared to them my backpack is a lot lighter and I have
a far better footwear compared to them being barefoot.
As we passed the famous Kambal na Anahaw
the trail got a lot harder “literal na pababa” and tho we can see the falls
from where we are, still we need to go down the very steep trails consisting of
rock and boulders before we could actually reach the falls.
No exaggeration but it felt like
my knees will give up on me anytime. I was like “mind over mater lalalala mind
over matter kaya ko to...’”
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| We can already see the falls from where we are |
But then the Falls was just WOW,
the water sooo cold and was reward enough.
And we just had to explore...
Di' pa kuntento... may isang falls pa sa taas...
We were not prepared for a night trek so we had to leave early before its gets dark.
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| Bilis selfie bago dumilim! |
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| Sunset! |
Would I do this again? DEFINITELY! I will just have to exercise more. :)
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