Travel: Heart of Darkness

There were quite a number of titles I wanted to use for this entry. Among the nominees were I Finally saw the Pacific, or Great, I forgot to charge my battery, or I'm so tired I can barely write my blog.

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My day started at 5am, where I had to wake up much earlier than usual. Admittedly, I slept again. Fast forward to 2 hours later, still asleep, but was 100 kilometers north of home in a moving vehicle. E sa inaantok pa talaga ako nun e. So my companion and I, took a right on the Davao-Butuan road, and started the long, no, very looong trek on a winding, unpaved road for Surigao del Sur. Each barangay would have about 200 meters worth of cemented roads, for a cluster of 20 houses - probably a not so nice view, but my ass was being murdered by the van's shock absorbers that I could barely care.

I reached the city of Bislig at noon, a full 6 hours from the minute I left my house, and while the bay reminded me of Cagayan de Oro's, with this version featuring the tranquil Pacific. Everything was eerily quiet, or have maybe it's just that I saw The Ring recently and I am reminded of the mountain shack in the movie? Moving on, while you you may think that the Pacific is overrated, it's not. Not a lot of countries feel the full brunt of the largest ocean in the world, but we live in the frontline of that.

See the Pacific. Check. Now that's settled, let me tick that off my tourist-checklist, where a standout entry says "see Taiwan from Ilocos on a clear day".

Yikes, this blog entry is going nowhere. Anyway.

The batteries in my camera were not charged. Doh! No pictures for me, but there wasn't much of a view either. There were nice ones, but I didn't get the opportunity to take some snapshots. Oh well, next time.

Now, I must confess, I never did get to finish Joseph Conrad's novel. I read the first 30 pages of it, and, ultimately got bored. I did manage to fork up some details of the novel, and it was about a long river cruise in the jungle. That's exactly what I felt, except that it wasn't a smooth water ride, but a bumpy all-terrain trek. The jungle was lush with old trees, thanks to the reforestation efforts of the Paper Industries Corporation/Company of the Philippines (PICOP). Everytime the vegetation would clear, we would find ourselves almost floating in the mountain, being surrounded with mist and fog brought by the frequent rain.

The last time I entered a jungle was a trek with the 10k club, up the Mud Springs in Makiling. I heard the phrase "10 minutes na lang!" about four times. Similarly, i had to bear with "duol na ra" (malapit na lang) this trip. All complaints aside, being in the jungle again was quite disarming but reassuring that there are still trees, acres and acres of them, found in our country. Stuff I may not be able to see elsewhere includes a wild boar crossing the road, and logs with girths of about 2 feet loaded onto trucks.

I want to see the three-tiered Tinuy-an falls, and I will be staying overnight for that one.

ps. Sorry for two things: This has been more of a complain-a-thon rather than and a travelogue, and for the disastrous order of narratation. Seems like I banged my head harder than I initially thought.