Mt. Daguldol is still so far the first and only mountain I ever trekked. It was one of our many activities for our summer 2007 PE class, which is Camping. The mountain, about 670 meters high, is said to be of Level 1 difficulty.
When we arrived at our beach spot in Laiya, we left our things there first, and rode a motorized boat, which dropped us off at the jump-off point of Mt. Daguldol. And the hike began.
My hiking buddy was Jy, a long-time friend and a sorority sister of mine. Like her, I was an active runner during that time so I didn’t really get tired easily, and I only required short time to recover. There was a stop halfway where you can buy halo-halo. Everyone of us bought one.
As we continued the climb, I started to feel my legs shivering. We just had to sing it all out to focus away from fatigue. We often passed through flat areas which we always mistook to be the summit. We were that desperate because the sunlight was starting to reduce its intensity. We also noticed that our PE professor was out of sight. We learned that he didn’t continue the climb anymore. We were left with the local guide and our professor’s fellow mountaineer.
The best part of the trek was of course the victorious feeling of reaching a mountaintop. There were less than ten of us who reached the summit first. What made our experience bizarre was the sight of abundant cow droppings and of course, the cow that welcomed us with its “moo”. The summit was not empty of mammals.
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| Photo from Jy's phone |
After waiting for our other classmates to reach the summit, we took the opportunity to sit on the grass and rest our legs. It was an advantage for us to be the first ones to get on top because of the longer time we would have to rest and to enjoy the view of the ocean. The next challenge for us was to be able to go down the mountain before darkness comes.
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| Photo taken by either Sir Juno or one of our classmates (sorry, I forgot :( !) |
It took less time for us to finally go down the mountain, and it was already late in the afternoon. I thought there would be a motorized boat to take us back to our beach area. But instead, we walked through the beach! It took us another hour to reach our base. But it was worth it because of the beautiful rock formations that were not present that morning, and were only revealed at low tide.
I went back to the beach at the sight of my then boyfriend (who is now my husband), who followed me and Jy, together with our frat brother to get themselves some beach fun. They were disappointed because they couldn’t contact us the whole day. The hardest part during those times was that there was dead signal starting from the rocky shores to the mountain summit. But all the fussiness disappeared when it was finally time for dinner!
It was my first time to sleep on the sand only with a sleeping bag. I felt like we were in a nature-themed hotel bed, with cool winds to ventilate us well enough. That was how good it felt. And we spent the rest of the next day swimming.
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| My husbunny |
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| Greg, me & Jy |
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