Mt. Napulak

 Mt. Napulak from afar

I've been assign in ilo-ilo for two months and never get a chance to climb this mountain. But now on my second assignment in iloilo again, I will not let my chance pass not to climb this mountain. With a long weekend declared by government, I plan ahead climbing this mountain. August 16 was my birthday and as a tradition for myself, I usually celebrated my birthday its either in mountain or beach camp. This time as a treat for my self, I will climb Mt. Napulak. August we woke up early to prepare our things, 6 am we leave Jaro from the place we are staying and took a taxi to terminal going to igbaras. Together with my 2 colleague tim and jarvis we are all excited, jarvis was his first time and tim was second time. It was an hour and half from City proper to Igbaras. At about past 9 we reach Igbaras, murot was already waiting for us there, he will be our guide for the whole trek. So we buy a pack lunch in the carinderia at after that we took a habal habal to jump off, we will do a traverse hike, our jump off is in Brgy. Bagay, we reach jump off at around 10 AM and  we start to trek, as not 100 percent condition because just came from High fever plus cough and cold, I was easily got tired.

World largest flower (raflesia)

Iguana along the trail

We reach the irrigation before lunch so we plan to take our lunch there. After lunch we took a 30 minutes rest then again start trek. Along the trail we saw a world biggest flower which is called raflesia but it does not yet bloom. Before we reach the last water source, we saw an iguana along the trail. he was just like one of the dried leaves along the trail maybe because he can adopt any color which is one of his characteristic. Finally we reached the last watersource. We took another 30 minutes then after this is mostly assault. Rain fell when we are near the summit, so continue trekking with almost 0 visibility. On or about 5 PM we reach the summit campsite. The wind was so cold and the big rock in the summit was covered with fog. Luckily he was showed a little time and i was able to get a picture of it. We prepared our dinner early as i remember our guide listening to the radio which the news was about late DILG secretary Robredo plane accident.

Napulak Rock....

It was a very early lights off. 7:30 PM or 8:00 PM were already lights off. We woke up 5:00 AM to see the sunrise but no sunrise appeared, it was still foggy in the summit. We decided to break camp at 7 and leave the summit at 8. We did a traverse hike. The view form the other side was beautiful that you can see the other mountain which is the Mt. Taripis. The descend took us 4 hours. We washed up at the river which the water also come from the waterfalls. 

From Left: Tim, Jarvis and yours truly