Dumaguete Days, Part Three

Much as my batchmates and I enjoyed our time in Bais, it paled in comparison with our excursion to Casaroro Falls that weekend. Even as early as Wednesday we were planning for it during workshop breaks. By Friday evening everything was all settled—the food (beloved paninis from Silliman Avenue Café), the guides (Gabby and Herbie, courtesy of self-designated workshop guide Mickey Ybañez), the route. Though we all knew that the trip would involve hiking, none of us knew how much we would be doing that.

We left Banilad early Saturday morning and rode a jeepney to a certain town, whose name I have forgotten, where we would begin our trek. Christine’s then-boyfriend Adam and a workshop auditor named Maiya also joined us. Once there, we headed for the base of a hill and began our uphill hike. Being inexperienced, not to mention fairly out of shape, we were already panting and perspiring midway through the two-hour climb. At one point or another one of us would ask Gabby or Herbie to slow down a little or if we could rest for a while. It was almost ten in the morning by the time we reached the entrance to Casaroro, our bodies aching, our breathing heavy.

BODIES AT REST

As we rested by the entrance, we noticed a small wooden sign nailed to a treetrunk. Lose the calories; let’s do the jungle trek, it said cheerfully, or something like that. Somehow that was not the kind of greeting exhausted hikers would like to see. It didn’t cheer us up at all.

“Putangina,” I remember Marby cursing that time. “Jungle trek, jungle trek. Fuck.”

That’s not the end of it. After we passed through the entrance we saw a crudely completed concrete stairway with wooden railings spiraling downward along the face of the mountain. Not only did it look steep, it also did not look too secure, at least to me. But we had no choice; it’s the only way to get to the falls. So we carefully descended the stairway, one after another, forming a snake-like line, the view of treetops distracting us now and then from the scary sight below us. Some of us had to hold on to each other at some of the stairway’s trickier spots. But almost an hour—and more than 350 steps—later, we finally and safely reached the base of the mountain. A healthy stream flowed nearby. We heard a waterfall roaring, not far off.

Gabby and Herbie then led us through several jagged rows of massive boulders. Over them we could see Casaroro in the horizon. One by one we cautiously crossed from one rock to another, from one row to another. We really took our time, for the boulders were quite slippery. Christine knew this very well, for at one point she momentarily lost her footing. Good thing Adam managed to grab her just in time. It didn’t take that long for all of us to reach the stony edge of the cool pool of green water, to feel the raging waterfall spray our tired faces.

A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES (AND FEET)

Up close, Casaroro Falls looked quite impressive. The way the wall of leaves and moss surrounded the falls in a semi-circle, the way the shining white water poured itself into the pool—it almost resembled a beautiful, almost overflowing bathroom sink with the faucet wide open. It was hot that day, but being so close to the waterfall we didn’t notice. All of us just stood there, staring, soaking at the splendid sight, until one batchmate stripped down to his trunks and began to wade into the pool. Others followed. I think I was one of the last to take the dip.

I felt as if my entire body was in a heavy-duty freezer. The pool was that cold. But I felt determined to linger in it as long as I could, so I did, floating around the pool’s edge. There’s no way I would swim near the falls. I’m not that daring, or dumb. In contrast, Maiya was both. At one point we saw her inexplicably on the wall of foliage, her arms and legs extended like a spider, looking as though she was approaching the waterfall. What she did alarmed us: what if something bad happens to her? Even Gabby got scared, to the point he tried to climb the wall himself and try to dissuade her from going further. Good thing she stopped then and there.

But her odd behavior didn’t stop there. After we had enough of the pool, we decided to have our lunch at a shaded picnic area by the boulders. While we were eating the paninis we had packed earlier that morning we saw Maiya not far away, lying in the stream with her eyes closed, seemingly relishing the rushing water surround her petite body. The scene puzzled us. Then BJ hilariously but quietly quipped: “Para siyang patay na dwende na lumulutang.” I think we almost choked on our food when he said that. That's one one-liner master for you.

We decided go home not long after we had finished eating. It was already past one in the afternoon by that time. Much as we groaned at the prospect of climbing the same stairway we had used to go down, we had no choice. So we went up the steps, all 350-plus of them, lining along the face of the mountain like a snake, stopping briefly at several points along the way. I tell you, climbing that stairway was way harder than going down on it. We were once again panting and perspiring when we reached the entrance more than an hour later, the accursed sign still greeting us. Someone should really tear down that sign and throw it down below, I thought then.

Thankfully, the trek had become much easier from that point on, and within the next two hours we had reached the base of the hill, and the town. There, we were able to convince a jeepney driver to let us exclusively hire his jeepney. It would have been an uneventful trip home, except that Maiya insisted on sitting on the jeep’s roof than inside with us, even after we had invited her to come inside. We never cared to figure out why. The driver got a bit irritated, but what could he do?

As the jeepney sped en route to Banilad, my batchmates and I soon settled in our separate spaces inside the vehicle, satisfied, silent. The trek to Casaroro Falls may not have been easy, but even that early we knew it was so worth the effort. Not a bad way to end the second week of our workshop.