Batangas Twin Hike Part I: Mt. Talamitam

First time to hike a mountain, correction its MOUNTAINS. Mt. Talamitam and Mt. Batulao twin hike in Batangas. I never expect myself to go as far as it has been. Its like telling and asking myself, "Hiking a mountain?? walking, trekking, climbing under the unexplanably heat of the SUN?!" oh well, Im some kind of a person that never-goes-out whenever the sun is striking so hot.



Im always at home comes weekends, I took a long sleep, relax, eat til theres no more food, and facing my laptop and doing some social networking sites stuffs. Thats why i asks myself, "really am I sure of this?" :) but everything came to a point that theres a reason for me to do this. To appreciate nature, and love it. Read my post to know how wonderful it came out despite all of the hardships. :)

Our meetup place for the ones coming from Metro Manila was at Waltermart in Munoz at 5:30 in the morning. From there we took a bus going to Taft bus terminal to board the buses on route to Nasugbu, Batangas. The bus left to the station just before 7 am and after paying the P125 fare, we used the 2 hours trip time to take a quick nap. We were already at Nasugbu at around 9am and when we asked the bus conductor if we are almost near the jumpoff of Mt. Talamitam at Km. 83. To our surprise, the bus has already passed by Km. 83 and we had to take another bus ride going back but this time, it's for free because it's the bus conductor's fault for not telling us that we are already at our stop. We arrived at Km. 83 around 9:30 am meeting up with the rest of the members of our group. After registering our names at the store near the highway, we have to descend on a cement which becomes a rough road, going down to Talamitam river where the trail to the summit officially starts. Before arriving at the river, we stopped by another hut telling us that we need to register again and pay an entrance fee of P20 and also forcing us to get a guide for P300(We paid P20 each for we are a group of more than 15 persons).

The registration hut before descending down to the river.

After all of that was settled at around 10 am, my first time hiking has officially started! The trail starts after crossing two bridges, first is a concrete bridge and next is a bamboo bridge. But during our hike, it seems like the bamboo bridge can't be used anymore so we have to descend to the river, good thing the water is just shallow and you can cross it without getting wet by stepping carefully on the rocks laid out there.

 Me at the first bridge crossing Talamitam River.

Picture taking at the trailhead.

  After crossing the river, is a somehow steep woodland trek. After emerging from the woodlands are gradual slopes and then a plateau with summit of Mt. Talamitam in sight.

Our group resting under the shade of one of the few trees after the woodlands.

View of Mt. Batulao from the trail

Our group was very exhausted upon reaching the plateau due to the heat of the sun so we decided to pitch up a tent and leave our bags inside.

Clear view of the summit from the plateau

My photographer /buddy/bestfriend :)

A large part of the trail has no shade at all

Part of the trail is used as a grazing area so expect to encounter a lot of cows and goats along the way.

Our only rest stop after leaving our bags was under the shade of bamboo trees. While resting, we saw a person carrying a large box coming our way and to our suprise, he's a local who is selling ice drop to the climbers along the trail.

I bought a Pinipig Crunch which costs P20 and it just tastes the same as the ice drop you can get in Manila for P5. P20 is not bad for like Kuya Manong selling those ice drop cause I can see in him how hard to earn money only this way. He looks so tanned, and you know its because he always climb the mountain to just wait and look if there's any mountaineer who would like to buy those.

We continued our climb and the heat just got more unbearable as the time is already past 12 noon.

Almost there!

After an exhilirating 60 degree assault to the summit, we have finally reached the top at around 1:00 pm. I was so exhausted that I just sat for 5 minutes before I was able to stand up again for some picture taking!

The shrine at the summit.

After the picture taking at the summit, our group started our descent at around 1:15 pm so that we can eat our late lunch. Good thing we used a different a trail on our descent at the east side of the summit which is much easier than the one we used going up.

 

After we got back to our bags at around 2 pm, we were finally able to take our late lunch. We rested a bit and continued our descent and we were back at the registration hut at around 4 pm.

Just plain tired :)

A hike is never complete without fresh buko juice.

After resting and freshening up, we got back at the highway around 5 pm to board the bus so that we can head to Evercrest which is the jumpoff of Mt. Batulao and our second mountain in this twin hike which will be continued on the next blog post: Batangas Twin Hike Part II: Mt. Batulao