Following scraps of directions to Panay's second highest peak
Finding a route up Mt. Napulak
It’s always felt a bit odd seeing travel vlogs from the Philippines where people get lost in jungles, trek up mountains, and find pristine coasts all on their own.
Of course, none of this should be unusual. The Philippines is full of natural wonders. The weird part is that I’ve been to the Philippines around a dozen times, and that’s not what my visits have looked like.
To be fair, the majority of those visits were as a child, so I wouldn’t have exactly been scaling mountains. I’ve also spent the majority of my past visits staying with family. My mom’s side of the family, and her generation of siblings in particular, aren’t exactly the most outdoorsy. Most of my childhood visits have been set against the backdrop of shopping malls, hotels, and restaurants.
But I’ve always known that the Philippines is chock full of natural wonders. And as someone who managed to grow up into an outdoor enthusiast despite the lack of a family influence, I wanted to make sure my next visit gave me a taste of Filipino nature.
My visit ~this time with my wife and three kids~ was based out of Iloilo once again. Iloilo is my mom’s hometown, located on one of the central islands. It’s near a lot of popular ecotourism hubs like Boracay or Bohol, and in theory it boasts a lot of ecological appeal as well.
I decided to do a little advanced scouting using my favorite method: zooming in and out of Google Maps until I found things that looked interesting, which led to the discovery of two mountains. Mt. Taripis & Mt. Napulak.
The uploaded images to both looked fantastic. Taripis held the distinction as the highest mountain on the island and Napulak wasn’t too far behind. At 1,300 and 1,239 meters of respective elevation, it looked like they were beautiful and just the right level of difficulty to climb.
The only question was… how?
A quick search online about how to get to the Mount Taripis trailhead was incredibly futile, and Google Maps didn’t seem too clear about where we could park the car and set off on foot. The info on Mount Napulak was similarly cloudy. I found some posts and photos by people who’ve done the climb, but unfortunately none of them documented it thoroughly enough for me to find the trailhead.
Of the two, only Mt. Napulak was listed on AllTrails, but even that wasn’t much use. The listing described it as a 30 mile out and back hike that would take 15 hours… and placed the starting point right on the coast, with about 70% of the drawn trail representing the roads to the base of the mountain.
I did find a blog post that wrote out how one hiker took on the climb. It started at the Municipal Hall of Igbaras, where he was then assigned a habal-habal (motorbike) to the barangay (small neighborhood) at the foot of the mountain. It was from there that he hired a guide.
But would things actually go the way this blog post made it seem?
I had to talk to Lamer.
Lamer is a taxi driver, but he’s also so much more. He’s our family friend, and his versatile skill set has led to my family using him as a multipurpose fixer of sorts… he’s helped us grocery shop, been an impromptu wildlife guide, among other things. Basically, Lamer helps us get places and then some. I have yet to find a task he’s been unwilling or unable to take on.
I asked Lamer what he thought of the route, and we decided the only way to know for sure would be to try. He’d been to Igbaras before, so he couldn’t see why it wouldn’t work. We picked a day where the kids could stay with my family and their nannies all day, then we set off.
We started in Tigbauan, where we spent the night on some beachside cottages. From there, Igbaras wasn’t actually too far away. We drove through a sequence of small and mid-size towns before arriving in Igbaras, which was most recognizable for a large grassy town square with a playground (you don’t see a ton of those everywhere). The municipal office sat on one side of this plaza, and the public market on the other.
At least the blog post was accurate this far.
Lamer, Deanna, and I were directed upstairs. When we reached the appropriate office, we saw posters of both mountains and a few other surrounding waterfalls. A friendly attendant let us know we were on the right track and had us pay the environmental fee. She handed us a visitor book to sign and we added our name below some hikers from Germany.
We weren’t quite at the destination, though. We had to park Lamer’s taxi at a house where our motorcycle fleet would pick us up. We drove forward several miles as the roads got smaller and rougher, which made sense as eventually motorcycles would have to take over and do what a standard sedan could not. Finding the actual house took a few tries, and it wasn’t until Lamer had rolled down his window to quiz a few people we passed that we learned we drove a bit past our target.
We backtracked and found the right road. When we neared the last house on this road, Lamer seemed to recognize it. Bernado’s house!
Lamer had also told me he hadn’t been to Igbaras in about twenty years, so his recognition of this friend’s house was pretty impressive. (Well, maybe Bernardo’s more like a distant acquaintance at this point.) Unfortunately we never met the famed Bernardo. Someone else, a family member, we think, invited us in to change into our hiking clothes. Afterwards, we hopped out to find our habal-habals waiting for us.
There were three motorbikes, so each of us hopped on the back of a different driver. I’d never taken a motorbike on a road with this many climbs and descents, so that added a bit of a thrill before the hike even began. We rode for about ten minutes and climbed the hill to Barangay Bagay- the small town/neighborhood where the trail would begin.
We arrived at a large Barangay Bagay sign, on which was painted a blossoming rafflesia… the world’s largest flower that we just might encounter on the hike. To my surprise, this venture was going much more according to plan than I anticipated. It seemed like the perfect opportunity for secondhand online information to be outdated or just incomplete. With the exception of our bonus search for Bernardo’s house, so far, the blog post played out exactly as it was written.
The habal habals dropped us off in front of a small office, which was no bigger than my three year old’s bedroom and shared a wall with a chicken grill restaurant. We walked in to sign another guestbook, pay more one registration fee, and to meet Joseph.
It felt like a mission accomplished just getting to the trailhead, following random online searches thus far. But the actual trek was about to begin.
Oh snap, this is a long adventure. Guess we’ll have to do a two-parter. Stay tuned for the next episode.