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| Mt. Makiling rainforest park trail. |
Mt. Makiling the mystical mountain in Luzon, home of Maria Makiling, the "diwata" or fairy who believed to be taking care of all the mountain's rich resources from fauna, faura to waters. Like everyone knows about the mountain's legend, it's slopes forms a female shape lying on the ground. This inactive volcano attracts mountaineers and nature trippers to enjoy and experience the great naturals it posses.
If you are coming from Manila, take a bus from buendia to Los Banos, Laguna, P99 each and rent a jeep to UP Los Banos, P15 each. On the other hand, me and my bf came from Cavite, so we went there through van from Pala-Pala in front of Robinson's Dasmarinas to Los Banos about 1 hour for P95 each then a jeepney, P8 to the said University.
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| Trail map to Summit (station 30) and safety reminders for trekkers. |
Saturday morning at UPLB jump-off, we started the trail about 10:45 AM, we registered and pay P10. They gave us the trail map (left) and off to trekking without a guide. The group decided to take UPLB trail to summit and traverse trail to Santo Thomas, Batangas in our descent. Advantage of this would be much easier ascent and even the traverse is quite harder, steep trail was not so much a problem, and disadvantage would be not able visit side trips in UPLB like mud springs and flat rocks.
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| Nice arrangement of those tall slender trunks. |
Based on the Trail Map, there are 30 stations. On stations 9 and 10, food and water refill are available. After 3 hours of walk, we reached the first food station and took our lunch. We brought pack lunch and some just bought food there and drinks they want, soft drinks if you wish. :)
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| After 30 mins, we reached Agila base. |
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| The dead snake found was stabbed with knife. |
After taking care of our grouching stomachs, we started our trail to campsite again. In our hike up, we saw this beautiful creatures along our way. The snake on the left was found dead, I don't know how but it was obviously killed intentionally based on it's wounds. On the lower right, cute orange millipede resting along our way.
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| Fungi...Mushroom... |
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| Limatic traversing. :) |
Like any other rain forest, Mt. Makiling's famous small but terrible creature "Limatik" resides and infest in this particular trail, UPLB. It's really scary because this blood sucking thing might get into your skin, eyes or ears without noticing it. When it gets into your skin and the "sucking" process happens, the wound made will continuously bleed upon removal. Moreover, it's kinda slippery so others can't get it off and immediately panic!
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| Strange tree. |
Along the way, I was amazed with this tree. First, It was my first time see this kind.. Second, I it is so unique for it's white fur-like spikes all over it's branch. If you will able to see it and have wild imagination, you could imagine that this might move and act living creature! hehe. Meanwhile, I just then realized when I saw camping areas along the trail that It took us awhile to find a better campsite with a wider area because we had 6 tents.
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| Scenic view from trails. |
Finally, after 4 hours of hike from the food station and being paranoid about the Lumatiks, we found a campsite that would fit us. It was really tiring and until that point we were concerned about the leeches, so we had to fix everything that would help our tents things to avoid it. We had to remove dried leaves, avoid submerging our tents near plants/ grass and provide enough light to see those suckers.
We break the camp 6:00 AM and started our trek to peaks.
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| Rope assisted ascent (left). Bamboo ladder leads to Peak 2. |
It took us 3 hours to reach and enjoyed peak 2. The area was mostly covered with dense grass/plants and trees.
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| Peak is so much dense of plants and tall grasses, you wouldn't see the view hidden behind those. Also, this area is highly infested of limatics. |
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October 22-23, 2011:
Mt. Makiling, 4th Mountain to beat. We used UPLB trail to summit but battled traverse trail in our descent to Sto. Thomas, Batangas. Limatiks greatly infested the previous trail and luckily haven't sucked by those. :). Meanwhile they were absent on the second trail, maybe due to it's surroundings' condition and temp which is kinda dry and humid.
If you are planning to hike Mt. Makiling, I suggest you do day hike in contrast to us, which was overnight. Overnight hike might be a nightmare, First, campsites were highly infested by limatics. Second, you might be paranoid if those sneak into your tents and feast on their bountiful host or get into your food while you are eating. hehe. Remember they came from everywhere, any direction.
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I ask our tour guide, why shouldn't they put a couple of Bangus there so it will have some friends hehe, plus they can breed that bangus to other bangus and it will live happily ever after!lol. Well, They just prefer to leave it like that and to share the story to the tourists.
While swimming, I saw a small jumping creature that looks like a tadpole (a little larger version) under holes of rocks with 2 arms in front! Upon searching the internet, I discovered its name. It's a mud skipper, source: wikipedia(left). Actually I didn't saw it on mud, under a huge rock, (behind me on the picture) instead hiding on it's holes. I tried to catch it but it's hard, it skips so fast! Well It's my first time to see this one, I just thought that maybe it is the one mentioned on science books where evolution on animals came in..haha just linking to my high school lessons before.
