Hike to Mt. Palay Palay/Pico de Loro

Jump by Van Halen up and under. Fade from black: Maan, Marvin, Dean and yours truly in a circle: serious, silent, avoiding eye contact and stretching without team coordination. Eye contact commences. Cut to group laughter.

The hike was at Mt. Palay Palay in Maragondon, Cavite where the famous Pico de Loro is located on the fateful day of the 28th of September.

From our meet-up point, we, the awesome foursome rode an fx to Ayala costing Php45. From Ayala we rode a bus to get to Coastal Mall which cost Php12. We then rode another bus headed for Ternate, Cavite at Php82. Next mode of transport was a tricycle headed for DENR Maragondon costing Php300. Registration fee cost Php20 and about an hour into the hike we had to pay another Php25 registration fee for the community.

The trail was conveniently easier compared to that of Mt. Sembrano's. The pressure of having to reach the summit and getting down from it in 3 hours, as was the fastest time of one of Marvin's hikes with his friends was what was daunting.

We occasionally stopped to eat banana and talked about a wealth of topics: How Ebe Dancel's music is solid, the PDAF scam, politically apathetic students revealed by an episode on WOTL, Barangay Elections, a recently discovered extreme sport called bouldering, social science experiments, mixed-martial arts, marathon running, yoga, the belief in aliens and douche-bags at the office.

Upon reaching the summit, at 664 meters above sea level,the monolith -a giant rock formation shaped as its name -Parrot's beak is instantly seen along with the view of Caraballo Mountains northward, Nasugbu Batangas due south, Maragondon to the east and South China Sea due west.

I've set my mind to not climbing the monolith and true to my word, I didn't and was in charge over watching our belongings while my three compadres braved it.

Five minutes into waiting alone, another group of four people stumbled upon me whilst I was waiting under my umbrella, they were Rod, Carlo, Prof. Joey and Jessie. A group of people our age, with better camera. :)

(c) Prof. Joey

Both groups were instant friends and we hiked downhill to get to the waterfalls where Marvin guided us to.

After they cooled off at the waterfall, we happily hiked through the familiar terrain headed for the jump-off point at DENR, freshened up and partook of my tuna sandwich baon and headed for home sweet home.