The Road Less Traveled 1 : Chasing Waterfalls - Mt. Romelo

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.

Mt. Romelo is located in Siniloan, Laguna, Philippines. It stands 240+ MASL and is home to at least 7 waterfalls. This mountain is the go-to place of aspiring hikers as it is considered an easy climb. And that couldn't be more perfect because back in February 2014, my highschool friend and his boyfriend organized an overnight hike. At first I was hesitant to join because I'm not perfectly fit and I didn't have the gears to climb a mountain. But when I read about it, with a rating of 2/9 difficulty, then why the heck not. Might as well try.

The crew - my highschool friends Ella and Angelie, her boyfriend Francis, my cousin Jelica, and my boyfriend Andre.



We were first timers except for Angelie and Francis. It was fun and new. The trail is straight forward without much ascent. However the challenge is carrying my backpack. I'm not physically active, with zero exercise, so you can see the dilemma here. But I didn't want that to ruin the experience, so I tried to go along and rested every one in a while under the shades. Thank God for trees :) And when I say every once in a while, I meant like every 10 minutes. If you remember your first time going up a mountain, I know you'll agree when I say there's no such thing as an easy climb.

It took us a little bit longer to reach the camp site. But we got there just in time for lunch. We had our packed meals and had the tents set up. I don't know why but I really enjoyed setting up the tents, I felt like a pro mountaineer already. JOKE.

The campsite is located near Buruwisan falls. To get to the catch basin, we had to go down a steep trail. It looked scary but it was so much fun!! Some of the parts were steeper than the picture below so we weren't able to get a shot.

We're actually going up here, but you get it, right? ;)


Now, the most amazing part... the waterfalls! It stands 50 meters high of awesome. We spent almost the whole afternoon taking pictures and swimming. The water was cold and it was the perfect reward after the tiring climb.

A few meters downstream is another falls, Lanzones falls. I love this mountain! It felt like a playground that day. We traversed the river from the catch basin - crawled and jump through huge slippery rocks. We had it all to ourselves, the other groups visited the other falls. It was very cold beacuse of the impact of the water. We decided to ditch the other falls and stayed there a couple of hours - just to chill and appreciate the wonderous works of Mother nature.

We headed back to camp, had our simple dinner, then called it a night. A few hours later, the unexpected thing happened.. it rained! It didn't bother us that much because we were so tired and we were able to sleep it off. The thing we didn't think of was the next day.

We had to go down the mountain with all the mud!!! It rained in the morning too. What a should-be easy trek turned out to be the most dangerous things I've ever done in my life. And the worse thing is there were limatiks everywhere. It's like a small leech and sucks the blood out of your freakin body. So just imagine the struggle, but we had no choice because we can't stay up there. Fortunately, to this date, we're still alive. And the experience opened a lot of doors for me.

If something scares you, do it.

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This is a series of post about the mountains I conquered back home. I hope you have your great adventure too!

Cheers!