Warrior Pilgrimage

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on May 25, 2009

IT HAD BEEN RAINING FOR three days and three nights and on the fourth day, today, February 15, 2009, which is a Sunday, left-over gray clouds from last night's were still on the horizon in the half-light of 5:00 AM as I waited for Boy Toledo near my home in M.J. Cuenco, Cebu City. Boy T's KIA Pride arrived minutes later and I hopped inside. Our destination - Guadalupe.

Again, as was last week, we heard a Holy Mass at the parish of the Our Lady of Guadalupe de Cebu at six. After an hour, we went to our usual meeting place at the back of the church to eat breakfast and to buy pork meat, seaweeds (guso), spices and other ingredients intending to prepare and cook all these for our lunch scheduled in Manwel Roble's place.

Aside those, I carried three kilos of rice in my day pack and added a kilo of uncooked sea shells and fifty-peso worth of bread making my pack bulky and heavy. Early morning fog were already enveloping the hills around Guadalupe but we were ready for any barrage of rain this day. In short, our training will proceed come rain or shine!

We waited an hour for Ernie Salomon and Sam Lim and of others but all failed to come so we started our warm-up walk, just the two of us, from Guadalupe to Napo at exactly eight. The air was cool and the sun finally showed up pushing away a rapidly disintegrating raincloud by its heat. Vapor and mist rose among the surrounding landscape creating a shield to protect our crown and shoulders from the rays of the sun.

We understood why the others did not make it today. Cebu was lashed by a typhoon for three straight days...READ MORE (Press CTRL + mouse click)