Bantacay Falls: To Hell and back

In another of my adventuring ideas, Kuya Ewin, the kids and I went to Bantacay Falls. The game plan was supposed to be a half hour hike followed by relaxing at the waterfalls. What we got was much more than we bargained for. Since I thought it was only half an hour, I wore only my flip flops. after all, that's pretty much all you need here right? It was raining a bit on our way there, but a little rain never stops the fun in the 'pines. I got my first warning when we were at our start point and an old man came around leading a horse. His galoshes were covered in mud. In any case, we pressed on because well a little mud never hurt anyone right?



We walked for about a hundred meters on a paved walkway before we hit the mud and I soon realized that flip flops were a VERY BAD DECISION. I kept getting stuck and within a half hour of pulling the flip flops out of the mud, I gave up and went barefoot.


At this point we're all still in good spirits.


a little stream to wash off some mud

Soon however, we were walking in knee deep mud. It's a horse and water buffalo trail so the mud was particularly deep. It was a slow going because of all the mud and stepping over piles of poo. The frustrating part of it was that our guide was wearing flip flops and his feet were spotless. Somehow he managed to just alight on random objects and not get stuck.


the view was great...

trail was horrible!



we got to another stream along the way to eat our lunch. We hadn't packed much since we anticipated it to be a morning activity. After three hours of walking in mud, we finally reached the falls. I don't know if I can quite say that our hike was all that fun, but it was definitely an adventure. The falls were really gorgeous, but very very cold.
















trying to smile in the freezing water!

The way back from the falls was even worse. It took us almost four hours to hike back and I got left behind on the way and it rained the whole time.. As the most out of shape person there, and with no shoes, I was struggling. My arms and legs got cut up by the sharp plants along the way. Looked pretty gruesome. When we got back to the car, I found out my backpack was not waterproof so I ended up riding in the car wet. Thankfully though, we all made it out alive and it's definitely an adventure for the books!