Mt Apo Weekend

My first weekend in Davao was a busy one.  We started Friday night with a dinner with the Mayor's Office.  I was hoping we would go to the Mayor's residence or City Hall, but we were taken to a nice Chinese restaurant.  The Mayor was unable to attend, but several of her staff and some of our clients came.  As usual, we had a lot of good food passed around the table - I had the best fried squid ever - and finished if off with a local desert, seafood jelly.  We called it an early evening, because the vans to Mt Apo were scheduled for 7am Saturday morning.

Saturday morning the team piled into 2 vans and went about 2 hours up into the mountains to an eco resort at the foothills of Mt Apo. We drove through a lot of banana and mango plantations, where it looked like the locals were growing plastic bags - they protect all produce for export from insects and bats by covering the fruit with plastic bags, even individual mangoes.





Mt Apo Highland Resort



We stopped at our resort, Mt Apo Highlands Resort, to drop off our bags.  The resort is an eco-friendly resort with cabins - 4 bunk beds or 1 "queen" bed and sitting areas underneath.  The showers were separate, but I had more hot water at the eco resort than I typically do at our hotel in Davao City.  We met our local guide Lito and his dog Sherpa before piling into jeeps to start touring

the area.  We actually put 8 people in one of these at one point!

  

Inside Cabin Number 2



Lito and his dog Sherpa







Packed inside the Jeep







The first stop was a local village - Tibolo Village - for demonstrations of local dances, costumes, weaving, cooking and a luncheon of local food.  The team even planted trees as part of a service project.  It was raining, so we couldn't see Mt Apo's peak yet.  We took a ton of pictures here, I've tried to include the best.  There is a local dish, chicken cooked in bamboo, that they are known for that was delicious.


Claire and Juni dancing with Tibolo Village Children

 

Bamboo Bridge and path to village

Tibolo Village



Weaving Demonstration



Local Kids







Ti bolo Village Luncheon



Parhum and Lito planting a tree



Roadside store with HUGE fresh produce



After a pleasant lunch we piled back into the Jeeps and headed to the mountain zipline - of course.  You have to go up a washed up road to the launch spot and not even the Jeeps could pull it off; you could walk in the mud or take a horse.  There were only 3 horses, so I walked - poor choice, the horse riders had it better.  The zipline and cable car were fun and they had a lot of safety harnesses and trained staff.  Too bad the weather hadn't cleared for an even better view.  



Parhum on Horseback

 

The road to the Zipline

Jan on the Zipline

   

Cecile flies away on the Zipline

 

Cable Car View



Civet Coffee

Thank goodness we did not have to walk back down from the zipline.  The jeeps were able to make it to the drop off point and we headed to our next tour stop - Civet Coffee.  If you don't know what Civet coffee is, take a moment and look it up.  The civet is a cat/racoon/monkey - like animal that farmers feed raw coffee to.  The civets, um, process the fruit and leave behind the raw coffee bean.  The farmer can then collect, CLEAN, roast and grind the coffee beans into a premium coffee.  We visited a small civet coffee farm, where we were given samples of civet coffee before heading out to the cages to see the process (clever).  The civet coffee wasn't that bad and the civets were adorable.



Civet Farm



Civet

 

 



Natural Spring Pool at Mt Apo Highlands Resort



We headed back to the resort to swim and start dinner.  There was a natural spring pool, but it was cool water.  The mountains were almost 20 degrees cooler than Davao - it was great.  Several of the team had submitted shopping lists for local dishes they wanted to make for the group.  Some helped prepare ingredients and some worked on eating the food that was prepared.  It was a slow process but the food turned out great.  We had Spanish starters, Indian Veggie Pakodas and Bajjis and fried pork.  Lito also got the bonfire going after a lot of kerosene on the wet wood and we roasted some marshmallows for smores.  We sat around the fire for hours until people started drifting off to their bunk beds. 

Preparing Dinner



Relaxing around the bonfire

Mt Apo

We left the resort around 9am for our hike to a waterfall on Mt Apo.  A lot of the team was tired, but we had no idea what we were in for.....  It was not raining on Sunday and we finally saw Mt Apo - it was impressive.  It takes 2 - 4 days to climb to the top and back, and it is considered an accomplishment to make it to the top.  The Jeeps started down this road that was nothing but muddy ruts through the banana plantations until they stopped and told us we were at the trailhead to the waterfall.  We met up with some more local guides and headed off for what we thought would be a simple hike, we were wrong.



Mt Apo Waterfall



The first indication that this would not be what we expected was when Lito started cutting trees for walking sticks and his hand pointed almost straight down when he told us how steep the trail would be.  That walking stick was a life-saver, I would not have made it without it.  The local guides were there to keep us from falling too much and to help us down the REALLY steep parts.  I don't have any pictures of the trail because I was too busy trying to stay on my feet, which I failed to do several times, sigh. 

I do not know how long the actual trail was, but it seemed a long way, straight down.  When we made it to the waterfall, it was worth it.  The canyon was cool and the waterfall was beautiful.  We played in the water and rested while we tried not to think of the trail back up. 

We finally started back up and it took us a lot longer - our ABV guy Jan literally had to pull me up some parts of the muddy trail.  We stopped a lot and ran out of water.  One of our team even passed out for a moment, it was just so humid.  We finally all made it back to the trail head and we were starving and thirsty and muddy.  The local guides were laughing, some of them had done the trail barefoot or in flip flops while almost pushing people up the trail. 

We climbed back in the jeeps to go look for gatorade and drinks.  You have to watch the video of what happened next.  I particularly like Lito's reassurances right before everything goes wrong....

My jeep got hopelessly stuck, they tried rocking it, pushing it, putting people on the hood, nothing worked.  Thankfully, a local truck backed up the trail and pulled the Jeep out with the help of several people pushing. Even Waya helped push, getting covered in mud up to her knees.  



The truck towing our Jeep is not larger than it appears

We were exhausted when we made it back to the resort - showers and food were the priorities.  Lito cut open fresh coconuts that had been in the cooler and we enjoyed cold coconut milk and pulp.  We packed up and headed back to Davao late in the afternoon.  I will admit, I was so tired I ordered room service, downloaded my pictures and packed up a very large bag of dirty clothes for the laundry before falling asleep early.  It was a great weekend adventure.