Mt. Manaphag, Concepcion Iloilo

                May 19, 2012 After spending previous weekend finding my relatives in Passi Iloilo, me and my colleague decided to take another outdoor trip in iloilo. This time it is located in the Municipality of Concepcion. The plan was we will do a dayhike climb of the highest mountain in the island then the following day we will do an Island hopping. We wakeup early and then travel going to tagbak terminal where we take a bus trip going to concepcion of course with my colleague buddy Tim and Mabel. We arrived at around 6 am in tagbak terminal which the first trip of bus going to concepcion ha about to leave, we decided first to take our breakfast and take the second trip going to concepcion. What we ate? again chicken from andoks.. So after breakfast we ride a bus going to concepcion and leave at the terminal around 7 in the morning. and after 2 and 1/2 ride we arrived in the town of concepcion. We go first to tourism office for a registration and pay 20 pesos for the fee. Tim contacted the boatman whose already waiting for us. Tourism office not that far from the port where we ride a rented boat. The sea was calm and there are so many jelly fish, first thing comes in my mind when I saw it was the cartoon spongebob because the jellyfish looks like that in the cartoon. Anyway we leave the port at around 10 AM, during the travel we can see the mountain that we will hike, the mount manaphag which is located in Brgy. Tambalisa.

                  After more than 30 minutes we arrived in Brgy Tambalisa and then we look for kagawad sorry I forgot his name where the tourism officer told us to look for and we can stay in their place. After few minutes of wating, the kagawad has arrived, after some negotiation my colleague and I decided to take one room in kagawad's resort's "Irish Beach Park" at the foot of Mt. Manaphag. It was nearly lunch so I start to prepare our lunch, cooking our rice and prepared our canned goods. We also ask what the resort food can offer to us. Our meal for our lunch is canned good tuna, tortang talong and small dried fish called dilis in manila good enough to feed our hungry stomach.

                 Taking a little bit of rest, around 1 in the afternoon we decided to take the challenge of the Mt. Manaphag. We took a guide which that is the requirements for us to able to hike on that mountain. From the start of trek mabel and tim was a liitle bit nervous because it's their first time to do hike. The weather was so hot from the start and you can feel a little bit of wind from your skin. First hour of trek both of them are ok then we reach the view deck of the mountain where you can view the whole brgy. and some island from a far. The view was great and our location was a little bit dangerous because were in the side of a cliff. After taking some picture we resume our trek and I saw on tim's face that he started to feel the altitude, he started to feel dizzy so from time to time to took a 5 minutes rest while Mabel is enjoying the the trail and love hanging and lifting her body from the help of the tree trunks. I remember also when I asked Tim if he's ok he said yes and when I asked him again if he is sure then he answered me he didn't sure. Then I asked him seriously if he still want to continue and he answered me yes, the answered I want to hear from him that he can finish this trek. There still no trail so it's like we exploring the mountain and  not to mention that I always heard tim's voice ouch.... always something happen to him, it's either bitten by ants or victimized by some thorny plants. After 2 hours of trek, finally we reached the summit, even though it's not a 360 degrees view in the summit, actually no view at all because it was surround by trees, we feel great because we reached the summit that everyone is safe.  

Trek going to the summit

At the summit

                 After taking some rest and picture of course, I asked our guide if we the traverse is much easier than the trail that we accent and according to him it will be better to take the traverse because the trail was already established. So we decide to do the traverse, Tim is feeling better now, he already recovered from dizziness but another problem is he has a fear of height. So we descent on the other side of the mountain, I still recall how mabel laugh at tim because tim already removed his slipper just to cope up with the trail , He feel the trail was slippery  maybe because his knee was already shaking because of his fear of height. During the middle of the descent we stop at one house and take some rest, our guide offer us a coconut fruit for refreshing our body, that time it is hard to say no. Our guide climb up the coconut tree and pick it up some for us. Its almost 4 PM when we continue our descent and then after an hour we reach the other brgy on the other side of the mountain. We also visit one local houses which has a Philippine eagle pet. I asked the owner about the eagle and he told me that he already set the eagle free but its keep coming back so he decided to keep it. 

The descent

Eating Coconut Fruit

                    Going back to the brgy. were we are staying, we walk along the shore, it was a low tide so we enjoy a different rock formation, we reach brgy. tambalisa at around 6 PM. Mabel and Tim had enjoy our trek,its their first time, Tim got some bruises because of that thorny plants and he also got some bite from ants but overall the climb was great.