Warrior Pilgrimage

Featured at www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on August 24, 2010

AS I WAS UPLOADING the pictures of my recent day hike down the Upper Kahugan Trail of December 27, 2009, people can't help but notice the bare trail which months ago have been thickly-populated by madre-de-cacao trees locally known as kakawate. These same people are people I know and they belong to local mountaineering groups. They love to pass by this trail going down to Napo then Guadalupe after a day of climbing Mount ...

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 August 12, 2009.

TIBET IS NOT CHINA. Neither is it part of the latter. This I know when I began to read history books in the '70s.

There's a whale of a difference between the two! Tibet is a theocracy while China, officially the People's Republic of China, is a socialist state. The finest form of Buddhism is practiced in Tibet. The PROC have, long ago, shelved the spiritual aspect of its citizens by the Cultural Revolution ...