Mt Batulao, Nasugbu, Batangas

station 1

Since I had been home for most days after christmas, I thought it's time I cope up for January. I had been invited by my flatmate, and siince I had nothing booked yet, I agreed imeediately, and asked my friend to come over.

marker for new trail (huge ehh?)

We were at the cubao bus station at 5:30am ready to take the bus for Nasugbu (fare P132; San Agustin Trans). We got off at Evercrest and waited for another buddy who's on his way.

On that jump off are eateries and sari sari stores with pay comfort rooms. Price of goods is relatively ok (GSM blue 750ml is P85, instant coffee stirred in their cup is P12. I also took the time to charge my empty battery at P15).

view from camp 5

It was 9:45am when we left. According to our climb head, there are 10 stations ahead. Each station is like 100m from the other, and each offer fresh bukos and mountain dew.

next peak after one of the camps

Station 0 sells buko at P20 whhile the next one is P25. The third one (old trail) has it mixed with milk and sugar, and each small glass is P10.

mountain dew in the summit at P25

After that, the next staion, camp 1, is the registration where we paid P20 each.

After the registration and a quick break, we headed to camp 4 and straight to camp 5, where we agreed to have lunch and nap. From camp 5, you could see station 10, where we will pitch tent.

another angle at the view from the summit

By 6:21 pm, since a lot are already working on the food and help isn't really needed, I thought about taking some rest and write this article.

The cold wind is blowing crazy. This campsite seems to be a favorite campsite as people keep coming to this station and setting up tents. From my calculation, the campsite is huge enough for 20x2 person tents or a matrix of that. They have a fixed toilet in this site and they sell water in pails. They also have a hhut for large group fellowships.

heading to camp 10

view of the summit from peak 9

3:49 pm next day, we're on the bus heading manila. The descend through the new trail was far easy copared to the old trail. None of those ultra steep and elevated rocky and slippery trail. We've passed by both stations 2 (where there's halo halo, mountain dew, and buko juice) and 1 (where each buko is only P20) and hut is very wide and cozy. It took us only half an hour get to the hill, where the horror was.

headed to peak 9

It was through the barangay to the paved road that took us more than an hour. Since it has been raining all throughout the night til that time, the plain terrain has been turned into a mudbed. My footwear has completely lost traction and it was too hard to step on a s the mud (saturated with horse dung) has molded into it.

????

By the time we got to the paved road, we have called for a trike pickup and left. We met the same kids who ported our common baggage and the walked us through a house for shower. Surprisingly, it's 20/pail.

and it was raining the next day

totally soaked

Added notes: I think the best itinerary is to take a round trip, starting with the old trail then down to the new trail during descend. To and fro the old trail will be a great challenge. Meantime, i think the hardest part of the trail was getting down to camp 10 from the summit. It was steep, very slippery and the plants were thorny and were of no help.

mud dip

Wilson the porter