As we speak, I’m off to another adventure several months in the making. But the good thing about travelling is how the memory always seems to be fresh, even months after it has wrapped up. Our trip to Camiguin was more than a few months ago, but I could not help but look back at every detail with fondness. Good thing we have photos, eh? It makes for better distillation of those memories, so to speak.
After spending an hour or so at the White Island Sandbar, we headed back to the Pabua Cottages, where we’re staying, had a hearty breakfast, and prepared to set out for our day tour. Our ride – a multicab we’d coordinated with the owners of the cottages – came to pick us up for the tour.
Aaaaaaand, by this time there was already a bit of a drizzle, with signs of rain sure to come later on.
So, apparently, Camiguin is a very small island, you can cover the key points in a day, or a day and half, if you refuse to breeze through it speedily. Or, if you want to be more leisurely and take one of the longer hikes, you’d probably need around two or three days. But that is if you want to cover all the bases.
As much as we would’ve wanted to do that (cover all the bases, I mean), the weather wasn’t too agreeable with it. And you know that when the weather and Mother Nature speaks in volumes, us puny humans are practically powerless.
The first item on our itinerary is the Walkway to the Old Volcano and the Stations of the Cross, in Barangay Bonbon, in the nearby town of Catarman. We stayed in the town of Mambajao, which is just around half an hour away to Barangay Bonbon.
As we were driving along the coastal road, our driver/guide J (gawd, my memory sux, I forgot his name, so let’s just call him J since I think that’s the first letter of his name) stopped by an area, pointing out to this viewdeck-like spot overlooking the sea.
Well, any opportunity to take photos, so we jumped out.
On a normal day, I’d be one of the first to go “I’m scared of being in high places”. But you know how all those other thoughts go out the window the moment you’re “in the zone”? Like, you’re already there, so why not do it? And, sure, your knees might be knocking a bit, and the nerves aren’t helping any, but…. *shrugs* YOLO. Ya noe.
When it started drizzling, we piled back into the multicab, and drove for about 5 minutes more until we arrived at the foot of the Walkway to the Old Volcano and Stations of the Cross.
By this time, the drizzle has already turned into a light rain, the type that you’d need an umbrella for.
The “Old Volcano” refers to Mount Vulcan, which is only one of several volcanoes in the island.
It’s quite puzzling for it to be called such since, compared to the other volcanoes on the island, Vulcan is said to be the youngest, having been formed only in 1871 when the larger (and undoubtedly more famous) Mt. Hibok-Hibok erupted. You’d see these two close together, especially from White Island (but it was mostly covered with clouds when we were there, so.).
Just some trivia: the largely volcanic island of Camiguin has four stratovolcanoes, with several other parasitic cones or mini-volcanoes surrounding it. Aside from Mount Hibok-Hibok and Mount Vulcan, there is also Mount Timpoong (the largest), Mount Butay, and Mount Guinsiliban.
So what about the Walkway to the Old Volcano?
It is basically a series of flights of concrete steps, with some dirt-packed trail in between, leading up to the summit of the Old Volcano. Supposedly, when you get to the top, you’d have a view all around of majority of the island and the ocean.
As we started going up, we kinda had doubts already that we’d be able to reach the top.
Now some people might think it’s boring to just walk up stairs and hike to the summit, that’s why I thought it was ingenuous how they also turned it into a pilgrimage site, with fourteen sets of carvings or tableaus depicting the events leading up to his crucifixion.
And it starts with Jesus’ agony in the garden of Gethsemane.
By the way, walking or hiking up to the summit supposedly takes around an hour, max, depending on your pace. There were several other visitors who went ahead of us.
Personally, the walkway itself is relatively easy, unless you’re in the poorest shape, then you’d probably be winded in no time at all. But it’s all about pacing yourself, in my opinion.
I’d have to commend whoever created the carvings and set them up along the walkway. They weren’t fenced in or anything, so I suppose anyone can just go up next to the carvings to have photos taken or just fool around, but the limbs were still intact, guys~!!! Like, in other places, you’d probably find a soldier missing a limb, or his nose broken or punched in or something. LOL.
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Unfortunately, rain really started to pour at this point, and we saw some of the tourists who overtook us up on the trail coming back down. The dirt-pack parts of the trail were also starting to become muddy and overran with rainwater, so we deemed it unwise to continue up to the summit.
And even if we pushed on, we doubted we’d have much of a view anyway. So we decided to just head back down and go to the next stop in our itinerary. Our guide said we’re heading to a waterfall, so we thought that since we’re already wet with the rain, we might as well go somewhere that becoming even more soaked is justified, eh?
In all seriousness, though, if I get the chance to return to Camiguin any time in the future, and the weather is much nicer, I’d make sure to go back here and complete the course until I am standing at the top of Mount Vulcan.
Faithful or not, hiker or not, you will surely find some sense of fulfillment when you come here. In our case, even if we did not have that sense of fulfilling a complete climb, we still thought it an interesting place to visit. If you’ve been reading my previous posts with this bunch, you’d know that we are not averse AT ALL to walking where the trees are, even at higher elevation.
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