Outdoors

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on November 1, 2008

OLANGO ISLAND HAD been humming in my consciousness for so many years. I have read and listened to so many tales about her and it gave me some misgivings why I haven't yet ventured beyond the back side of Mactan Island before the year 2008. That honor went to my “old” colleagues in Cebu Mountaineering Society or CeMS and they crossed the Olango Channel to and fro with such regularity as if the island itself sits on dry land. ...

Featured in wwww.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on October 23, 2008

I WOKE UP FROM the incessant vibrations and alarms that my Nokia emitted. It was four at dawn, September 7, 2008. Looking beyond my window, I could see the somber sky developing gray overcast clouds that parlayed of an ominous rain coming. I have to rise from my warm bed, brave the the cold water from the pipe and take a quick shower and, from there, embrace the cold wind outside.

Ah, another round of trekking ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on September 6, 2008

IT WAS A PROMISING sunny Sunday and the clock fast ticking to six thirty in the morning. Already a Holy Mass at the Virgen de Guadalupe Parish is now past halfway to the “Amen” part as I passed by to take breakfast of two servings of sticky rice (puto maya) and a cup of hot steaming home-made chocolate at the back of the church here in Guadalupe, Cebu City.

Feeling refreshed, I went to the church parking ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on August 11, 2008.

THE YEARS 1992 TO 1998 were, without a doubt, my finest years as a mountaineer and an outdoor enthusiast. I was caught in a vortex of outdoor activities that my club, the Cebu Mountaineering Society (CeMS) have organized, starting from my initial climb at Mount Pangasugan in Leyte, which was very unforgettable, reaching a high crescendo with the ascent of the country’s highest peak in Mount Apo on 1994 and tapering ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on July 1, 2008

WHEN I GO TO the trails that intruded into the jungle fastnesses of Cuernos de Negros Mountain Range I felt sheer excitement and my adrenalin rushes to a level that is way beyond my normal dose.

Ask me why?


It is simply because along its trails, there are many surprises lurking from within that you would not find in any other mountain range. You liked adventure, you'll find it there. I will ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on June 4, 2008

THE MOUNT DULANG-DULANG TO Mount Kitanglad traverse climb is still more than a month away yet it never escaped the attention of Doc Abe Manlawe, especially the physical conditioning of those who will compose the team that will assault the physically challenging trails of these two very high mountains located in Bukidnon Province in Mindanao.

Even as the Cebu Mountaineering Society (CeMS) is still in the middle ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on April 1, 2008.

I WENT DEEP into southern Cebu last December 29-30, 2007 together with my friends from CeMS (Cebu Mountaineering Society) to observe our traditional year-end climb and trek which we held, this time, at Nug-as, Alcoy.


Nug-as happened to cradle within her confines the last stand of old-growth rainforests in the island province of Cebu, of whose forested mountains, we thought, have been completely obliterated ...