Warrior Pilgrimage

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 at www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on May 1, 2010

THE SUN SPIKED HOT today, December 27, 2009. I am with old buddy – Boy Toledo; two people from Kompay Lakaw Mountaineers – Nathan and Myla; and a junior bank executive – John Chan.

It had not rained today and it is a good day to introduce John to trail hiking. We deem it unnecessary to rest along the trail until after we have reached the river crossing where there is a water spring. We arrived at the place at 8:15 ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on November 6, 2009

I SAW TODAY, November 6, 2009, the felling or the sentencing to death, so to speak, of a jackfruit tree and a mango tree, both full grown and in the prime of their existence, because it gets in the way of a hotel rising in Cebu. Too bad, I wished I have trees as big as those in my lot.

I have tasted their sweet fruit only this year because this is the year that they have started to bloom well, thanks to the ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on October 15, 2009 and during Blog Action Day 2009

THIRTY-FIVE SUMMERS ago, I lived in Cebu City when there were wide open spaces, few people on the sidewalks, fresh and clear air all around, clean seas to swim and tap water was still drinkable. I still live in the same place but I am now in a crowded neighborhood, sidewalks that are difficult to navigate, breathing polluted air, shying away from murky seas and forced to drink bottled water. ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on September 21, 2009

THE TENTH DAY OF May 2009, Mother's Day to all mothers, found me again training with Boy Toledo and Ernie Salomon along the trails in between Guadalupe and the Babag Mountain Range. We three just had a successful night navigation training on April 25, 2009 wherein we followed the Babag East Ridge Pass for the first time and stayed overnight at Manwel's Peak.

We three decided to go by that trail again, this ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on April 20, 2009

THE PROMISE OF CLIMBING again on February 8, 2009 on my favorite trail and training area in between Guadalupe and the Babag Mountain Range is always in the back of my mind. This mindset operate in clockwork unison with either Boy Toledo or Ernie Salomon, for whom this trail was named. It's either Mt. Babag or Mt. Babag and there are no other alternatives if endurance build-up training is concerned that is easy in your pocket ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on March 1, 2009

WHILE THE CEBU CITY GOVERNMENT and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) were asleep, anonymous termites armed with a chainsaw fell tree after tree in a remote hinterland of the city found either in the boundaries of Sapangdaku, Babag I or Kalunasan. It was in the early afternoon of February 8, 2009 when I chanced upon four stumps of newly-cut tamarind trees, their trunks and branches scattered about along ...