Outbound Activity @UPLB

My younger daughter is 13 years old. Sometimes I suspect, the age gap between us is taking its little toll. Like this morning, as usual I prepared her lunch+recess box for school, in to her Igloo lunch bag which she herself bought by her own money. To my annoyance, she transferred everything in a small paper bag, kissed me goodbye and left for school. wt#.

Other than those small annoying teen's acts, this girl is actually very sweet. And still my tail, or so I thought..
cos it hurts to recall when she started to stop me accompanying her to school trips. Like a year or two maybe?. She thought otherwise thu'. She would tease me that I'm a clingy mom! haha.




Weeks ago her school had an outbound activity in U.P.,Los Banos, Laguna. I guess you could equate it to a day camp or a team building.
Ofcourse, I wasn't allowed to go with her. Tears :(:)

I just stole these photos from her schoolmates and teachers. Thank you.








Two days ago before that outbound day, she just got out of flu. So you could imagine how worried I was when I saw this photo of her mud crawling..

Notwithstanding the special considerations I requested from her school to be excused from extreme activities. Daughter said the kind principal was in anyway watchful of her and always asking her if she could do a certain activity before she was allowed.

But there she was.. all fun for her. She said yes to all activities, needless to say.

Some happy trekking photos..




Setting the bar a bit higher_ a little hiking up a low- highland?

The hiking/trekking  daughter loved so much. She said it was so easy for her to do this activity cos she's used to it. We frequent some adventure trekking like here., here, here, here, and I know there are more post links in my archive. I'm just lazy now to do it, haha.

I have never heard my daughter talked with praises about her school trips eversince. This was the first time she went home all happy face bubbling with recollections of the outbound activity.

This must be something for her.

When I saw her photos in F.B...

I'd say_yes indeed :)

p.s.: she also took home  muddy shoes and clothes :))
pps: and a box of delicious buco pie <3

Pinagbanderahan Peak

Finally after more than 30 minutes from Cueba Santa, with more challenging trail than the latter, we reached the Pinagbanderahan Peak. It's 2000 ft. above sea level, nestles on top of the zigzag road in Atimonan Quezon. The name " Pinagbanderahan "  literally means where the flag was hoisted. Two flags had been raised here ( Japanese and American ) before our Philippine flag reclaimed it in 1946.




The views here were amazing, at this point thu', I was reflecting the challenging trails we had just gone through to reach this peak (from the bottom a 1 hour hike, but if you're like us who stopped for photo ops more often than necessary, 1 hour was a lie:)), and that same difficult route we needed to go through again in a matter of minutes. haaay. .

r e w i n d : 

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Remember, in the first phase of this trek I had introduced you to Alvin  our trekker guide. We kindah treated this trek as "follow the leader.




I followed and imitated how Alvin attacked the trail. .




the faces of sweating, uncertainties and wt#mom!!!haha.

My family followed and did as I said, haha.

ahh.. water breaks were rare treats in this side of the universe...

This was the semi-final water break cos in just a  jump we were about to reach the peak. To get up to the peak  thu', we needed to get down a little first.




Not as easy as sounded there thu'. .







Aside from Alvin, gravity ( to the ground we were stepping on, not the ground below out there) was the next best ally we had to survive this descending challenge. And yes those trees on the side were helpful too as they served as our handrails.




stairways to heaven




And I thought it was the last lap, but why was that it seemed like an infinite ascend?. .

Right on cue, as if the goddess of this mountain had heard my impatience, she did give us a teaser of what to come. .

I know, this shot is not enough to justify the ahhs and wows we had of this sight. but believe me, right up there it was a breathtaking view.




Until, we reached the real thing.  . the peak of Pinagbanderahan.

Worth the pains, don't you think so?




presenting _ the Avengers !!!

 Now the Avengers had to go back down the earth. .

And no, I didn't promise that getting down was a lot easier than getting up. Both were challenging to the highest peak.

We exited in the old road ( we entered the trail here ) which used to be the only way to enter the trail before.




I'm happy to report that out of the whole trek, we only had one casualty _ the half pair of husband slippers, haha.

-the end-

Cueba Santa

 This was taken at Quezon National Forest Park in Atimonan Quezon, 3 years ago. The two girls in the picture were my daughters.The giant grotto was the latest attraction in the park then.

Fast forward to 2012, last weekend we went to visit my home town (3 hours away from this forest park) and as usual we made a pit stop there. While having lunch, I saw a tarpaulin with photos of sight seeing packages the town of Atimonan offered. I was surprised that there were lots. Falls, caves beaches, mountain treks, to name some. Hmmm, in heaven I was! Ofcourse, the opportunity was there, I grabbed! haha.
To cut the story short, we availed a guided trekking tour, initially to Cueba Santa and later ( I'll tell you why) to Pinagbanderahan Peak. It was so random, you would see how physically unprepared we were. On our 3 for 100 slippers we faced the challenge ;).

The best thing was the trail commenced right then and there. . at the foot of the mountain where the grotto is. We begun the trek with a prayer for safety.




Another good thing about this trail is it's somehow novice friendly and by the look of it, although it's the first time I heard about it ( excuse me, I'm no mountaineer, I'm just a mom with itchy feet:)), it sure is a road frequently traveled. There were concrete stairs which thu' already difficult for "lay men"  like us, it wasn't like the muddy mountain trails we experienced in the past little adventures we had.




Not easy, but definitely we enjoyed the scenic trail with the pouring sweat, aching muscles and all.

I particularly like the idea that they left the dead trees in their natural cementery habitat. Our guide mentioned that it's being prohibited to take away those fallen trees from that forest.

I was in love when mountainous rocks appeared in the middle of the green forest! I was thinking  maybe I was a fairy in the forest in my past life.

 If not, why I'm so happy when I'm frolicking with nature:)))

We made countless water stop...

. .yet it seemed we sweat like no amount of water could refill, haha.

We saw plenty of deep black holes created by the rock formations. Maybe down there are caves? or snakes???




For me, the rocks made the trail so much interesting.  For instance the photo above was a passing through. .

 . . reminded me so much of  the movie "The Flintstones". You know the stone age, haha.

 Until we reached our goal_ the Cueba Santa.

 Upclose, it looks like another black hole we saw a lot earlier. Omg, I was silently contemplating how on earth could we get down to that deep hole of an entrance. It was so different from the caves I've been in Bohol and Palawan.

It was pitch dark and the entrance was narrow and steep. I thought we needed some rope to rappel.

With the help of our guide, we managed to get down to the cave.

But to however my giant husband was able to squeeze himself in, I had no idea. haha.



Inside it was pitch darkness. I was behind the lens here and was actually just blind shooting.

Later I was able to adjust the aperture and somehow achieved some lights.

I wasn't sure of the exact reason for that candle lighting,for the light maybe? Later thu' when I learned from our guide the myth/history of the cave ( I will share in the ending part of this post), I thought it's more than just for the light but maybe more of spiritual intention.
Notice that the cave has been vandalized badly. Sad.




Nothing spectacular in this cave. No awesome stalagmites and stalactites. Quite small too.




Except for the story it  dwelled during Japanese invasion of our country. This I got from our trekker guide and right now I'm too lazy to google confirm it. Meet our guide "Alvin" who waited for us all to get back into fresh air, out of the cave before sharing the cave history. It has been told that a number of nuns were killed and probably molested, raped? inside the cave by the Japanese soldiers. Now, don't you think it' had been reasonable and thoughtful of Alvin not to divulge the creeping story inside the pitch dark cave? Agree?
He added, there have been instances that some rock formations reflected like nuns lining -up inside the cave. I wonder if those rock formations really exist and I just missed them or were they vandalized already and gone? Or just some apparitions seen by the chosen ones?

I thought we only reached the anterior part of the cave. There was a bigger hole there which I thought would be possibly accessible via rappelling. Maybe for the experts. Definitely not for us.

And hence the journey of getting there had been more exciting than the cave itself, we wasted no more time and exited the way we entered.




Back to the fresh air we decided to continue on to the more challenging part of the trail.

To the Pinagbanderahan Peak.
Next.
see ya.