Warrior Pilgrimage

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on July 1, 2010

IT HAS BEEN THIRTY-five years since I played my first basketball game. It was just a pick-up game of three a side. A one goal affair. Then and there, I sprained my middle finger. I was a fourth grader. Nine years later, I played my first collegiate varsity game.

I suited up for the “new” Cebu State College of Science and Technology (CSCST) Builders in 1983 in the now-defunct Cebu Amateur Athletic Association (CAAA)1. ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on June 22, 2010

I AM ALONE today, February 28, 2010. I am going to the house of my young friend, Manwel Roble, above Napo but below Mount Babag to deliver two kilos of sweet and delicious fruits – the mangosteen and the lanzones. I have a purpose with the seeds of the fruit and it is for a noble cause. I aim to reforest the bare Upper Kahugan Trail whose madre de cacao trees where cut wholesale. Manwel and his family will nurture the seeds ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on June 15, 2010

THIS BLOGGER REPRESENTED this personal blog and its niche in the recent 1st Cebu Blog Camp 2010 being held in CAP Arts Center, Osmeña Boulevard, Cebu City on May 22, 2010. I get the chance to meet online blogger friends offline like Estan Cabigas, Xerxes Bernadez, Ka Bino Guerrero, etc., and it was a very great fellowship of website owners, SEO gurus, techies and advertisers.

I registered online at the last hour ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on June 8, 2010

A WEEK AFTER my exploration of an unnamed trail on January 10, 2010, I invited Boy Toledo and Ernie Salomon to assess for themselves this newly-discovered route. Nathan Cannen, who went with me on that day as my official photographer, invited Myla Ipil. The trio are eager to try the trail and my flu is not a hindrance to deny them this privilege.

As always, we start from the back of the Our Lady of Guadalupe de ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on June 1, 2010

I FOUND MYSELF RESTLESS on April 12, 2009 and I decided to visit my good friend, Ernie Salomon, in Guadalupe, Cebu City. We both were having a rare day-off from our weekly training climbs in Mount Babag, a height which is better accessed from Guadalupe and then from Napo in Sapangdaku.

It was a fine day devoid of rain and he offered me, over glasses of cold beer, his black Baikal backpack for four hundred bucks. ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on May 24, 2010

I FIND IT BOTHERSOME walking my hiking shoes on paved roads. The shoes are expensive and the lugs wear out easily. You have to need those lugs to dig deep in the dirt trail to keep your footing stable. As much as possible, you have to preserve the soles and walking on a concrete and asphalt road wouldn't help any.

The road from Guadalupe to Napo, our jump-off point for Mount Babag, is a paved road and every two ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on May 15, 2010

TODAY IS THE DAY! Me and Boy Toledo arrived first in the early morning of January 2, 2010 at JY Square in Lahug, Cebu City. Then Nathan Cannen arrived in his Isuzu Crosswind with Ernie Salomon and Myla Ipil on board and last to arrive is Jun Chan – a Citibank junior executive and upstart road runner.

We are here because we are going to climb Mount Mauyog, a mountain which I mentioned in my earlier article on ...