“Remind me again why we’re doing this” were the only words that I managed to let out in between gasps as I turned around to face my fellow travel bloggers. They were battling their own breathlessness.
“We have no idea,” they answered with synchronized laughter while trying to scale another sharp slope.
With all that I had been through during the trek, a pointer would help me reclaim the focus that has slipped somewhere along the trail, possibly during the moments I lost balance, slid down, and scratched all my limbs. There was a teensy part of me that wanted to back out. The part, however, was not only cowardly but also dumb for I had come a long way.
A long, long way.
We had spent practically four hours trekking under the fickle skies — in some cases threatening us with the looming rainclouds, other times frying us with the harshest sunlight. Not counting the full hour we were carried by a habal-habal on the bumpiest — no, bounciest — ride I had ever had a pleasure of surviving. The magnitude 8 trembling of my knees and the intensity 10 profanities I involuntarily cried would have been for nothing if I turned back. The only chicken this day was going to see was the one I had for breakfast that morning.
Tired but completely awed
Little wounds and scratches
Blogger sandwich! Fellow bloggers on a habal-habal ride before the trek
But I still needed a reminder. even just a peek of our destination? pięknie proszę?
It wasn’t like we had not been pampered by the mountain the past hours. It had, actually. Along the way, we found some of the tallest trees, the smallest nepenthes (pitcher plants), and the sexiest clouds that I laid eyes on. After all, we were there for a reason.
Co jest objęte tym przewodnikiem?
Lake Holon and the Allah Valley
A path rarely Trodden
The Reclusive Calm of Lake Holon
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Lake Holon and the Allah Valley
Located in T’boli, South Cotabato, Mt. Melibingoy towers over the town with its highest top at 1,750 meters. A dormant stratovolcano, it harbors a crater named Lake Holon, which was formed after an eruption on January 4, 1641. The mountain and the lake are also known as Mt. Parker and Lake Maughan, in honor of American surveyors whose plane crashed at the strona. It has also nurtured wild, endemic flora and fauna.
Lake Holon feeds Allah River that flows across South Cotabato all the way to Maguindanao. It is a main source of food and livelihood in the Allay Valley, an area shared by South Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat.
Allah River meandering in between cliffs
Allah Valley has been battling floods because the 1990s. To create a solution, a group called Allah Valley Landscape development alliance (AVLDA) was formed. They discovered that one of the problems was the environmental degradation in the highlands because numerous locals are forced to cut down and burn trees to earn a living. funded by LGSP-LED, a collaborative program between the Philippines and Canada, they are formulating an eco-tourism program as a much more sustainable alternative source of income for the people. AVLDA and LGSP-LED invited bloggers, myself included, to try their proposed tourism circuits to help them better the program with our feedback and spread the word about South Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat.
A path rarely Trodden
It wasn’t my first time to trek, but it was my first trek to a not-so-popular destination. It shows on the trail itself. Thick moss blanketed numerous parts of the trail, which was also fringed with overgrown turf and flowering shrubs.
It was both frightening and encouraging. Frightening, because we knew we were going the narrow, slippery way. (Later, I would find myself unintentionally stepping on a moss-covered rock and sliding three meters down, injuring my arms.) Encouraging, because the tougher the trail got, the much more we realized we were in for a treat — the pristine, practically untouched kind. and we were right.
Lois of We Are Sole Sisters
Mossy ground, sunny skies
Pretty little things that caught my eye
A man building a home and a small community along the trail to Lake Holon
The Reclusive Calm of Lake Holon
A wound and 34 scratches later (yes, I counted), I finally reached the edge of the lake. As if all the fatigue vanished magically and with renewed energy, I ran to the banks and danced with the wind. The music: that distinctly amplified songs of the cicadas. The audience: the ghostly clouds kissing the peaks of Melibingoy and the tall turf that swayed lightly, which were reflected perfectly on the mirror-like surface of the lake. It was so clear and serene that a fly dipping a toe would send ripples across it and I would see it from where I stood. No wonder, it has been awarded the Cleanest Inland Body of Water in the Philippines for two years.
Three conventional canoes were docked in one corner, as if waiting for us all this time. Wspinać sięMt. Melibingoy utrudnił oddychanie, ale Lake Holon całkowicie zabrał mi dech w piersiach i pobiegł z nim.
Canoe radzi sobie z tym? Odzwierciedlając niebo
Lois, zbliżając się do kajaka, ponieważ może. kajak.
Gay of Pinay Travel Junkie i Edgar z Eazy Traveler
Zmęczony, kto? Nikt z nas nie zadał sobie trudu. Byliśmy tylko klipsami papierowymi bezlitośnie przyciągniętymi przed nami ogromnego ciekłego magnesu. Od czasu do czasu wstrzymaliśmy, zatrzymując się, aby podziwiać w milczeniu, jakby wielbili.
Kiedy ciemność w końcu pokonała malejące światło, obiad był gotowy. Zimny, zimny wiatr wspierał atmosferę optymalną do odbicia. Ale z kimś serwującym szklankę rumu co dwie minuty, jedynym odbiciem, które się wydarzyło, były światła z mojego telefonu odbijające się od mojej tłustej twarzy.
Niezakłócona woda
Zimny, jasny poranek w Lake Holon. Zdjęcie Gael Hilotin z Pinay Solo Backpacker
Następnego ranka byłem jednym z pierwszych, którzy wstali. Podobnie jak Reflex, maszerował na krawędź jeziora i wygrzewając się w łagodnym słońcu. Usiadłem na głazie i pomyślałem o żmudnej wspinaniu się dzień wcześniej i obawiałem się wędrówki z powrotem. Dlaczego lubimy trekking i wspinanie się po górach, nawet przy nieskrępującej pogodzie? Dwóch mieszkańców – kajakowe, łapiące ryby – mijane, falując powierzchnię jeziora, która z wdziękiem migotała każdą falą. Nie ma lepszego wskaźnika niż Lake Holon.
Jak dotrzeć do Lake Holon: Z miasta właściwego T’Boli jeźdź habal-habal do Salacafe. Czas podróży to około 1 godziny. Z Salacafe jest to 3-4-godzinna wędrówka nad nierównym terenem do jeziora Holon.
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