every climb brings new items

The Mt Daguldol Experience

I just realized I haven't said a word about the last climb and we've already climbed the next one o^_^o.

Mt Daguldol is in San Juan Batangas. If I once thought Anilao was the farthest part of Batangas, I was wrong.

The trip took four hours. We actually felt like we should bring pillows next time. The trip to Gulugod Baboy was easier on our behind because we didn't ride the same vehicle for the whole trip. We hired a jeep to take us to Mt Daguldol. During the trip we took turns sleeping and waiting for the 1% of the road that wouldn't be cemented (it was mentioned on the IT) to signal that we were close.

It was harder for neal and me because we actually arrived at the meeting place on time : 5:30am and we left for Batangas around 8am. So I think one of our resolutions this time would be too arrive a bit late next time.

When we finally got to the uncemented part of the road we discovered that it was lined with beach resorts. We got to the end of the road and registered at a kiosk and got guides for the trip.

Instead of the old plan to walk along the beach to the mountain, we decided to take a ride on a boat. The advantages of being in a big group is that you don't have to shell out that much money for extra expenses. The beach was beautiful and clean. I would want to go back there if the trip didn't take so long. We got to our jump off point in 20 minutes and started our climb around 1pm.

Our guide was way too fast for the group. He didn't even sweat the entire way up, didn't breathe heavy and even smoked as we around halway up. He also wasn't carrying a bag unlike the other guides in our previous climb.
We were instructed to be polite at all times and since I noticed that the whoever was in the lead talked to the guide, when I found myself behind him, I tried talking to him.
I think our conversation went like this :
Me : Do a lot of people climb this mountain?
Him : Last week,.. (insert unintelligible stuff here )
(I nod and pretend to understand after a while, I grab the topic i heard them talk about a while ago.)
Me : Is it really easy to get up here using horses?
Him : (i think he starts talking to me about horses here. I can't be sure.)
(Afetr a while I go for th Bart and Lisa question)
Me : Are we there yet? How far is it?
Him : (something about a coconut which he points out to me, which I don't see and we proceed to hurry towards that point )

I think the moment I had the chance, I stopped being the lead.

Neal found this long stick that he was able to use as a walking stick. It's long. It can be sculpted to be Gandalf's stick and he loved it. I found a smaller one too and used it as well. It is helpful. We all got the idea from Ken, who injured his knee at Mt Halcon and bought a stick for climbing.

That's where our new motto came from : "every climb brings new items". After every climb, we learn a lot about what we need to bring and what we can't bring. We also upgrade our items. I think there were at least 3 new bags, a new cookset and plenty of sleeping mats. Next climb will probably be walking sticks just like Ken's. I'm planning to buy a new bag myself. Though that would be hard to explain to my parents since I told them this climbing thing was temporary ^_^. Yeah right.

We encountered three houses that sold drinks on the way up. One of them sold ice cold mountain dew which helped refreshed us. The next house sold halo-halo. We had a nice time at that place because the view was great, we were actually at the side of the mountain and not somewhere in the middle so we rested a bit as the wind blew.

We still had a long way to go after that though. There were several times when we thought we were going to reach the summit but didn't. Finally after 3.5 hours, we reached our camp site.

The campsite was huge because it was not at the summit. We were in a meadow surrounded by trees and we had to walk a bit to get a good view.

However we did have constant water supply for our needs and that more than made up for it. It's nice to know you can just wash up whenever you want to or that you don't have to shell out your drinking water for cooking.
We started cooking. This time, as promised neal and I helped in watching over the rice. We were part of the Accenture group during that time and we cooked two batches of rice and pooled all of our corned beef. We all brought different types of corned beef and decided to mix everything.

After we ate, the halo-halo corned beef turned out to be tastier than we expected, we all sat down for socials. This time, the socials were a lot more fun than the previous one. More people joined the socials since the campsite was nice. People brought gin and we had gin joss (gin with extra joss) just like the last time.

We talked about horror stories, green jokes, personal stuff. The ones who poured out the drinks kept the conversation going. Some people were in the hot seat and the new climbers were interrogated ^_^.

After a few hours and people started to fall asleep, the few of us left had a laugh trip. One of our fellow climbers told us that there were different levels to drunkeness: happiness, sadness, anger, coma. We were all laughing at anything anyone said during that time so we all agreed that we were at the first level. Except leo, hehehe leo kept swearing, every sentence had 2 to 3 swear words and we kept teasing him that he was jumping levels. Of course later that night, the one who told us about the different levels admitted it was BS and we all laughed again.

Neal and I retired to our tent since we didn't want to get so drunk we'd end up sleeping outside.

The others were still drinking when i fell asleep.

I woke up around 2 am because of loud noises and thought that my fellow climbers were still drinking. I looked out and saw that several more tents have been put up by another set of climbers.

After 3 hours, another group arrived and woke us up again because they were talking loudly so I decided to stop trying to sleep and prepare for breakfast.

After breakfast, some of us decided to go to the summit with the best view. Neal and the others were left behind and I went with the others to the 30 minute trek to the summit.

It was a hard trail and it seemed like people rarely went to that summit. The forest was thick and we were constantly climbing steep slopes. I was glad I had long sleeves or my arms would have been scratched a lot.

Leo did say we complained all the time but forgot all about it when we got to the top and the extra climb was worth it.

The peak was rocky though that made climbing it easier. The view was spectacular. It was a cliff surrounded by smaller mountains We were at the highest point. We could see the entire mountain side and catch a glimpse of the other mountains.

Then the fog came in and we all sat down and waited for it to pass us.

The place was so serene and we took a lot of pictures so we would remember the place and so that we could brag about it to the people left in the camp hehe ^_^'.

After we came back and told everyone what we saw, we all packed up our gear and prepared to go down, but not before we took more pictures of the group.

Neal picked up a stone on the beach before we climbed the mountain and he left it hidden in a trunk of one of the coconut trees as a remembrance. Though I think that stone is going to be too high for us to reach when we go back.

We went down with neal in the lead. Both neal and I decided to be at the front because of several advantages: 1. You get to set the pace. 2. If you arrive way ahead of the others, you can get rest as you wait for them to catch up and more rest when they all decide to take a break. 3. You can keep up your momentum and not wait for the person in front of you.

The sweeper has the hardest job because he waits for everyone else. Usually, Ken or another experienced climber acts as a sweeper.

On the way down, we were lucky to chance upon the third house I previously mentioned. The owners of the house sold buko. We all had one or two fresh bukos and we even put some in our containers. The buko juice was cool and the meat tasty. Since we were still full, we didn't stop at the halo-halo place anymore and made our way to the mountain dew place. Unfortunately they were all out of drinks.

After 2.5 hours of climbing down, we finally got back to the beach. Some people had a victory halo-halo from one of the stands and I went back to buy cold mountain dew from the store. I bought 2 and drank it all.

Then we sat at the beach and rested while some of the boys went for a swim.

The beaches there are very clean and cool. I just walked along the beach and got my feet wet.

We took another boat ride to the beach resort where our jeep was parked and after an hour or so, went home.

The trip home was even longer. We got caught in traffic so I arrived home around 11pm. Too tired to go to work the next day.

Things we learned :
1. DON'T arrive early or exactly on time.
2. ALWAYS bring plenty of water. bring more than what the itinerary says because getting drunk makes you thirsty.
3. Buy anything that you can use to make water potable.
4. Wet Ones/Baby Wipes can be used in a LOT of ways.
5. Don't wear long sleeves going down. Don't wear your nice clothes going down or they'll get ruined.
6. NEVER think that you can handle the cold.
7. Buy a new bag.
8. Buy a sleeping mat.
9. Bring plenty of change or small amounts of money because stores on the mountain don't have change.