Leave nothing but footprints

     The Pico de Loro summit was actually my first hike here in Manila. This happened last November 2015, There were only the five of us who went there, it was actually a "Trip lang" Hike. Haha! im so sorry I didnt post it sooner.


     None of us even researched how high the summit was, how hard it is to climb and how long would it take for us to finish the trail, we didnt even know that the trail was so hard, slippery and dangerous that we didnt even hire a tourist guide going up.

   Those are my friends, Mike (The Designated driver), Matt and Karen (The Power Couple), Ems, and Me (The orange backpacker). *since I really didnt plan to make hiking as one of my hobby, I didnt bother to buy hiking shoes and bag, I just used my Herschel bag and my New Balance shoes which I really regret afterwards.

A little advice on how to get there:

  you might want to bring car since the location was kinda creepy, there was no way of transportation. we did park at the DENR where we paid 20 pesos for the environmental fee, they let you park for free but im telling you there's no one there after six in the evening, no one even checked on us because the logbook that we signed before going up was left there open in some corner. 

   Going up was quite hard since its slippery and we had nothing to hold on to except the trees, the rocks and the ground itself. lucky for us some mountaineers who were going down gave us the kahoy (I dunno how its called) but we used it as a tungkod while going up to prevent us from falling.

We did a lot of stopover since this was actually their first hike. And this cutie dog climbed with us without even excerting too much effort. He made hingi our baon as well every stopover.

      It took us approximately FOUR HOURS climbing up since the trail was slippery and we dont have tour guide and plus the stopovers.

      From our view we can really see the monolith up close. this was actually the camp site where they USED TO allow hikers to stay. Sadly, they dont let hikers now sito preserve the mountain's cleanliness. We did eat out lunch at the summit though. Well from here the summit was like 20 mins away, and since its almost 6 in the evening we did hire a tour guide going down. 

 San Marino Paella is even more delicious here on top!

    The monolith may seem daunting at first look from the summit, but you'll be saying "it's all worth it" when you reach the top. And the view was actually breathtaking since we witnessed the sunset. I guess we're a lil lucky that time.

There goes the sunset that I was talking about. from the top you can see a lot of mountains that im not quite sure of, but our tour guide told me one of it was Mt. Binacayan, reaching the top was quite easy compared to going down---ALWAYS.

  

I remember that I really had to wait for kuya to pick me up at the top to guide me in going down.

Unfortunately, they closed the Mt. Pico de Loro Summit for some reason. still hoping that they would open it soon though.

  but all in all, it was all worth the climb, the summit was worth all the walk. Since then I decided to climb all the mountains that I can in this country bec the feeling was all worth it and satisfying once you reached the top. 

"Spend money on experiences not on things"