Hey, everyone! Have you missed our outdoors adventure? Well, here’s another one!

One fine morning, my AWSome (the name of our outdoors club) friends from the office decided to conquer Mt Hambubuyog located in Ginatilan, Cebu. What I love about our group is that planning takes just a week so there’s less likelihood for such events to not take place.

Anyway, the town of Ginatilan is about a 4-hour ride, and costs 120PHP each, from Cebu City proper so we had to meet up by 6AM at the South Bus Terminal. Originally, we had planned to meet there by 5AM but, obviously, we are not morning people. To cut the long ride short, we got to the town of Ginatilan at around 10:30AM, just in time for some early lunch and last minute shopping. We then took a motorcycle ride for 25PHP each person to Inambakan Falls, which is the jump-off point.

We had some idea about the trip we were in for, so we made sure to take a long, refreshing dip at the falls. There, we also met a huge group of mountaineers who were also on their way to Mt Hambubuyog. By the way, there is also a 10PHP entrance fee at the falls.

We started our trek at 13:30 and I knew we were in for a ride, err, walk. The sun was hot and the air was humid — not the most comfortable but wearing my wet rash guard kept me cool for a few hours. The biggest problem with following the trail to Mt Hambubuyog is that you follow exposed trails and, most likely, you will run out of water supply before you know it. Our timing could not even be more perfect — we took the hike during one of the hottest months of the year and it had not rained for weeks. Water source, you say? Sorry, not possible.

A huge mango tree is what greets you at the foot of Mt Hambubuyog. There is actually is a longer, easier route to the peak but we took the shortcut anyway because #YOLO. Duh. I suggest you don’t. The trail was steep and full of loose rocks, I had tried my very best to fight my acrophobia. Haha. I had great shoes, yes, but I could never shake off that possibility of falling off the mountainside if I took just one wrong turn.

Unfortunately, I could no longer remember the emotions that I went through that day. We got to the camp site at around 21:00, which is around 8 hours since we started. I could remember though how frustrating it was — while it wasn’t my first time to do a night trek, the last one we experienced wasn’t all that difficult, at least compared to this one.

While setting up camp, I could remember how silent everyone in our group was. We pitched our tents while the others prepared food — we must have exchanged less than 20 words for the whole hour; we were very exhausted and very hungry. We found out later that we lacked the utensils so we had to improvise — and used CLEAN(!!) trash bag to place all our food on. It kinda was like leftover food but nothing is gross to a hungry man. Haha!

After finishing up and preparing for what was supposed to be booze night (we brought 4 1-L bottles with us), we ended up dozing off while trying to get our daughter to sleep. I was surprised to see that she was standing right by the entrance of our tent, with my butt facing my friends, while the partner and I went to sleep. My friends told me the next day that they just barely(?) finished one bottle and then called it a night. We were all beyond exhausted from the trek and from not eating on time.

Come morning, we had a sip of coffee and nothing more. We had no more water supply with us and the nearest store was still a few kilometers away. We decided to move along the journey after packing up anyway. (This route was supposed to be the lengthier, easier one we should have taken the day before.) We were able to contact the motorcycle drivers we had the day before — and thank goodness they found us before we lost our phone’s signal!

We went out for lunch in the next town and then headed off to another waterfall which was such an awesome experience, it deserves a separate post.

Whew ~~ am I glad I got that out already. It would have been great if I wrote this piece right away while the emotions were still fresh but it took me a really long time to move on. I haven’t been able to camp in the mountains since this one. Haha!

PS. We got to meet another travel/adventure blogger from Cebu (Kring of The Wanderfull Life) — this was my first time and I was very excited! You can check out her entry about their climb here and here and you can also check out my friend’s view of our climb here.