IT
IS ALMOST OVER. Just one segment more and the CEBU HIGHLANDS TRAIL
PROJECT will be all over. The Year 2016 will always be a very
memorable year for me. Kind of busy. Busy of doing things that I
loved most like travel, teaching, blogging, humanitarian work and
explorations. I had put to history Segment IV, Segment VI and
Segment VII and, mind you, these were not easy walks. It resulted to
an estimated total of 190 kilometers walked in just a single year,
not counting Segment VIII yet.
Segment
VIII is that walk from Upper Beceril, Boljoon to Cebu’s
southernmost tip - Liloan Point, Santander. But, me and my
Exploration Team will start from Nug-as, Alcoy instead and I gave
just four days for this exploration hike. Can you dig that? It is
not impossible, you see. When you are focused on something,
everything can be done. I wished outdoorsmen with a purpose will be
inspired by this and would develop the ability to replicate Cebu in
their native Palawan or Negros or even combining Samar and Leyte.
Today,
September 21, 2016, the Exploration Team composed of this writer,
Jonathaniel Apurado and Justin Apurado are on a final mission. We
are all pepped up and we are grim and serious. We know not what lies
ahead after Boljoon but, definitely, we will try all routes where
there is a good sense to walk. We know we would be at Oslob, at
Samboan and at Santander a day or some days after but we know not if
we will be at Malabuyoc or at Ginatilan. That remains to be seen.
We
were all buoyed up by the success of Segment IV last January, of
Segment VI last February and of Segment VII last month, even though
we aborted this at a point when we were almost at the end. It was
not a big deal. We could return any day to finish that short
stretch. We were also on a high morale for our benefactors delivered
when we needed it the most. Without them, maybe it would take
another two years to complete this Project. I will deliver the CEBU
HIGHLANDS TRAIL in January 2017 and that is a promise that I will
fulfill.
Notable
among our sponsors who provided funds and very useful gears and
equipment are Titay’s Liloan Rosquillos and Native Delicacies,
Alvin John Osmeña, Aljew Frasco, GV Hotel Philippines, Silangan
Outdoor Equipment, Jonathan Blanes, Glen Domingo, Alan Poole, Jose
Neo, Tactical Security Agency, App Ops Philippines, Lester Padriga,
Harold Butanas, Lavilles of Australia, Bakhawan Beach Home, Melo
Sanchez, Glenn Pestaño, Amaya Montecalvo, Marc de Egurrola and
Markus Immer.
Not
to be outdone, the following had contributed to the CEBU HIGHLANDS
TRAIL PROJECT in the form of services, perishable goods and their
acknowledgments. They are Drinox’s Kitchen, the Quijano Family,
Jeremiah Dayto, Matthew de Leon, Mountain Stories Blog, Ham Radio
Cebu, the Mountain Climbers Alliance of the Philippines, the Camp Red
Bushcraft and Survival Guild, PAC Gear, and the Philippine
Mountaineering Blog.
All
that is or what had been, with regards to the CEBU HIGHLANDS TRAILS
PROJECT, are chronicled in WARRIOR PILGRIMAGE as the Man-Sized
Hike series. This is the blog that inspired the exploration and
this is the exploration that exposed the blog to more readership
following. Below is the itinerary of the days, time, events and
other useful information where the Exploration Team boldly finished
Segment VIII in three days instead of the four days allotted to it:
SEGMENT
VIII, CEBU HIGHLANDS TRAIL PROJECT
NUG-AS,
ALCOY TO LILOAN POINT, SANTANDER
FIRST
DAY
SEPTEMBER
21, 2016
04:30
– Leave Cebu South Bus Terminal, Cebu City for Alcoy by bus.
07:00
– Arrive Poblacion, Alcoy. Take breakfast in town proper.
07:15
– Leave Poblacion for Nug-as, Alcoy by motorcycles.
07:50
– Arrive Nug-as. Prepare gears, tighten straps.
07:55
– Leave Nug-as for Nangka, Boljoon. Pace: Moderate to fast.
Weather: Warm with cloudy skies.
09:15
– Arrive Nangka. Rest to repair external frame backpack of Justin.
09:20
– Leave Nangka for Cerdeña, Malabuyoc. Pace: Moderate to fast.
Weather: Warm with cloudy skies.
09:45
– Arrive Cerdeña. Chance meeting with village official and make
courtesy call.
11:00
– Leave Cerdeña for San Antonio, Boljoon. Pace: Slow to moderate.
Weather: Very warm and sunny.
11:30
– Arrive San Antonio. Rest and rehydrate. Coffee break with
snacks.
13:00
– Leave San Antonio for Cansaloay, Oslob. Pace: Moderate to fast.
Weather: Very warm and sunny but with thunderstorms in the middle of
afternoon.
16:10
– Arrive Cansaloay. Courtesy call on village head but we were
refused audience. 16:45 – Eagle One decides to make a stealth camp
in darkness on an unfinished house in vicinity. Dinner is crab meat
soup, rice and fried chorizo. Strong thunderstorms east and west of
us. Sleep on ground with shelter wrapped like blankets expecting
both storms to pass over our camp.
20:00
– Taps.
Distance
Covered: 15.3 Kilometers but only 9.7 Kilometers is officially
recognized.
SECOND
DAY
SEPTEMBER
22, 2016
06:00
– Wake up call. Immediately break camp. Proceed exploration for
another route to bypass Cansaloay and climb Mount Bandera instead.
Pace: Slow. Weather: Cool and cloudy.
07:00
– Arrive at a natural spring on the way to Mt. Bandera to rest and
rehydrate and to prepare breakfast of rice and egg omelet with sliced
chorizo Bilbao.
08:00
– Continue exploration. Chance meeting with a village official of
Cansaloay and decide to inform our presence and purpose which turned
out very well.
09:00
– Arrive Mt. Bandera. Propagated VHF signal using a Cignus V85
portable radio with stock antenna at 5 watts power to a repeater
tower of Ham Radio Cebu located in the Babag Mountain Range, Cebu
City, 118+ kilometers away. Communicated successfully with amateur
station DY7EYN.
09:20
– Leave Mt. Bandera for Manlum, Oslob. Pace: Moderate to fast.
Weather: Very warm and sunny.
10:55
– Arrive Manlum. Rest and rehydrate.
11:30
– Leave Manlum for Can-ukban, Oslob. Pace: Slow to moderate.
Weather: Very warm and sunny.
12:35
– Arrive at the Vincent de Paul Hermitage. Rest and rehydrate.
Prepare meal of spicy noodles and rice.
14:15
– Leave Vincent de Paul Hermitage for Cañang, Oslob. Pace:
Moderate to fast. Weather: Warm and cloudy.
15:45
– Arrive Cañang. Make courtesy call to village head at his home.
Invited to a fiesta dinner later. Set up hammocks and shelters at a
copse of trees.
17:00
– Failed to propagate VHF signal this time to Cebu City even when a
transmission coming from DX7CBU was very audible.
19:00
– Dinner at the home of the village official.
21:00
– Taps.
Distance
Covered: 16.9 Kilometers.
THIRD
DAY
SEPTEMBER
23, 2016
06:00
– Wake up call. Start cooking fires and breakfast.
07:45
– Leave Cañang for Monteverde, Samboan. Pace: Moderate to fast.
Weather: Warm with sparse clouds.
10:05
– Arrive in the vicinity of Monteverde. Rest and rehydrate.
10:30
– Leave Monteverde for Cabutongan, Santander. Pace: Moderate to
fast. Weather: Very warm and sunny.
11:45
– Stop at a crossroad of three rugged roads. Rest and rehydrate.
Start cooking fires and lunch.
12:45
– Proceed hike. Pace: Moderate to fast. Weather: Very warm and
sunny.
14:45
– Arrive Cabutongan. Rest and rehydrate.
14:50
– Leave Cabutongan for Liloan, Santander. Pace: Moderate to fast.
Weather: Very warm with sparse clouds.
15:30
– Strong thunderstorm overtook us at Bunlan, Santander. Fog caused
whiteout and obliterated trails and landmarks at five meters beyond.
Have to stop at one point.
18:00
– Arrive the national highway in Liloan. Proceed to Liloan Point
despite pain in muscles and feet.
18:30
– Arrive Liloan Point. Rest and rehydrate. Dinner at port
restaurant.
20:00
– Leave Santander for Cebu City by bus.
22:30
– Arrive Cebu South Bus Terminal, Cebu City. Terminate
exploration.
Distance
Covered: 19.7 Kilometers.
TOTAL
OFFICIAL DISTANCE COVERED: 45.30 Kilometers
When
darkness overtook us at a road corner fronting the national highway
in Liloan, Santander, there really was no stopping even as we knew we
still have a day on our schedule left, a day good enough to nurse our
aching muscles and sore bones and our tender feet soles. We all felt
the nagging pains and the obtrusive weight on our backs telling us to
stop but it was just about a half kilometer to Liloan Point, the
culmination of our collective sacrifices. IT IS OVER!
For
me it was more than five years’ worth of painstaking planning and
labor that found many skeptics and a few dissenting voices, overheard
or not, from an older crowd who thought they were God’s gift to
Philippine outdoors. Creating a route along the length of Cebu is
not my original idea and it had been there for the taking right after
Judge Menmen Paredes abandoned it. These same people could have
taken up the slack but they did not. They were just busy building up
their hype and making money from it. They have all the chance but
they were not the resilient kind.
I
have gained back REDEMPTION and ACCEPTANCE of my place in the
outdoors with completion of this bone-jarring project called the CEBU
HIGHLANDS TRAIL. It is beyond my comprehension if I were to gauge
this on the very first day I started this thing, which was a dayhike
from Lutopan, Toledo City to Guadalupe, Cebu City on February 20,
2011. It was impossible, logistics-wise, but I have chopped this
beast into segments and sub-segments at my own pace and tamed it and
I have made history and there is no denying that.
Even
as I sifted the sand along a shore in Santander, my mind is working
on the unfinished 7-kilometer stretch in Daanbantayan that was denied
me last month which I will cover on the next few days and that Test
Hikethru of the CEBU HIGHLANDS TRAIL in January 2017, right after the
Sinulog Festival. The CEBU HIGHLANDS TRAIL is my gift to the
Cebuanos, especially to the dozens of outdoor groups who are not
under the yoke of one super organization. This is for you guys.
This will be your playground soon.
The
finished CEBU HIGHLANDS TRAIL is not perfect for it trudged on a lot
of roads where it used to be trails. When I started on this thing,
the Cebu Provincial Government was already clearing ground for their
Cebu Trans-Axial Highway. A lot had been paved and I could do
nothing about it and roads are a blessing to residents of these
remote places. Although I am able to overtook and finished my
project before they did, it was not what people expected it to be.
It could be refined though in later years. I just made a template
for the future.
Testing
and propagation of radio VHF signals as a side event of the CEBU
HIGHLANDS TRAIL PROJECT is a necessity since it gives hikers the
flexibility of communicating to stations from places where it is
deemed remote and beyond the coverage of cellular signals. As a
licensed ham, this is a necessity. It places responders a better
advantage of locating lost hikers and would hasten response time. My
thanks to Ham Radio Cebu and to Mr. Ferdinand Mercado of the
Municipality of Alcoy for allowing Eagle One to ride on in their
repeater stations.
It
was my first time to encounter unusual thunderstorms in all my
exploration hikes of the CEBU HIGHLANDS TRAIL PROJECT and it happened
to us twice at Cansaloay, Oslob and Bunlan, Santander. The first one
on the first night, two storms were approaching towards our campsite
coming from the east and west. Just when we were about to receive
the full brunt of their furies when they clashed, it disappeared,
leaving us a very peaceful night and starry skies. The second one on
the third day came from the land mass of Negros and unleashed its
wrath obscuring trails and landmarks in a complete whiteout.
The
present provincial police director, PSSUPT Jose Mallari, is a very
thorough officer who does not let this small activity let slip from
his attention. I was provided assistance by his staff and I was able
to liaison with all the police stations that has jurisdiction on the
routes I would take. It was a very big help on my part and it
removed the difficulties that I could have had if there was no such
gesture. I did encounter a slight problem in Cansaloay but it was
not a big thing compared to the ones I encountered in Mabuli, Tabogon
and in Lanao, Daanbantayan during Segment VII.
The
CEBU HIGHLANDS TRAIL is now open and ripe for the taking this January
2017. I would be bringing Jonathaniel Apurado again with me since he
would be the only one available among the Exploration Team and it
would be another round of looking for another set of sponsors. The
Test Thruhike is a month-long activity, about 32 to 35 days, and
demand resupply of food in designated cache areas. Someday you will
walk the CEBU HIGHLANDS TRAIL and you will be proud to walk in it.
Someday.
Document
done in LibreOffice 5.2 Writer
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