Warrior Pilgrimage

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on November 8, 2009

IT IS FATHER'S DAY, June 21, 2009.

I am going up to Mount Babag today and I am alone.

Yeah, alone...

...again.

I have no problem walking alone. I find good therapy in the silence and I love the sound of my voice. I talk to myself. Yes, hum a song. Imitate a bird call. That's what you do when you're bored.

From my home, I rode a public jitney in the ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on December 8, 2009

AFTER AN ABSENCE OF more than a month, I am reunited again with Boy Toledo, of Ernie Salomon and, later, with Manwel Roble. Here we are again, maintaining our physical conditioning program walking the mountain trails of Napo to Mount Babag in the middle of an ongoing tropical depression! Just three has-beens so madly in love with these trails. The same three has-beens that would shame guys 25-30 years our junior in a test ...

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 November 1, 2009

IT HAD BEEN RAINING when I took a standing breakfast in the early morning of June 7, 2009 at an eatery in Katipunan Street, Tisa, Cebu City. Boy Toledo and Ernie Salomon were with me and they did likewise. At the end of this day, we will be completing the last leg of this “freedom trail” which will be used during the First Philippine Freedom Climb on Philippine Independence Day on June 12.

This is the trail ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on October 26, 2009

IT WAS IN THE night of September 22, 2009 when Boy Toledo, Ernie Salomon and I, for a change, visited the Cebu South Bus Terminal. Operated by the Cebu Provincial Government, it is located along the Natalio Bacalso Avenue in Cebu City and is in close proximity with the offices of the Land Transportation Office, CITOM and the Bureau of Fire Protection. It is the gateway to the south and west of Cebu Province.
...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on October 16, 2009

MOUNT BABAG IS ALWAYS there and I have no excuses why I shouldn't go there. It's only 752 meters above sea level and eleven kilometers away from downtown Cebu City if you draw a straight line. It's just a pygmy if you consider it against other Philippine mountains and a molehill if you have Mount Everest in mind. Nevertheless, it is MY mountain and you would find me and others tackling her trails there every weekend. ...

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. ...