After my first visit to a freinds resort he is building in Pundaquit, San Antonia, Zamablas I fell in love with the place. It’s peacefulness, and relatively easy access from Angeles City made it ideal for weekend beach get aways. It’s getting busier and more popular now with bus loads of people from Manila arriving. However, it’s possible as I found to still have quite a peaceful get away here.
My plan was to hike to the summit of Pundaquit mountain, and then traverse the mountain ridge and come down into the valley and pine forests that line the rear of the beach leading to Anawangin cove, a popular camping spot. I was advised to take a guide as the terrain can be difficult to navigate. However, armed with my GPS, and many years of mountaineering experience I felt capable to take this hike on without the need for a guide. Besides part of the fun for me is the navigation, finding your way, and getting into sticky situations and having to get out of them! I would NOT advise this approach for everyone unless you have wilderness and outdoor experience. Take a guide, they aren’t that expensive, then you can enjoy the hiking and scenery. However, for those with the necessary experience, it’s not that difficult. A certain elvel of fitness is required however as the start is steep and hard going in full sun with no tree cover.
My friend from work, Daniel, had asked to come along. His wife and friend would take the boat to Anawangin with the camping kit so all we needed was our day sacks. Sounded like a good plan. However, after 45 minutes into the hike on the steepest part of the trail, it soon became apparent that Daniel was not really cut out for this type of adventure. What he thought would be a straightforward hike was turning into a pretty tough ordeal for him. The blazing sun, dehydration and tiredness soon set in. He wisely decided to turn back and join his wife in the boat, leaving me to continue on my own.
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I had programmed the coordinates of Pundaquit summit into my GPS, as well as the coordinates for Anawanging beach. The latitude and longitude of each was identified using google earth, a pretty useful application in a country such as the Philippines. Not like hiking back in the UK where we have the luxury of highly detailed and accurate ordnance survey maps at varying scales. Of course this only meant the GPS could give me a straight line as the crow flies path, which meant I was in for some tough cross country walking.
The first 2 hours is steep to gain the ridge line high up. You could probably take an easier option than I did, and start where the ridge almost meets the sea, this would give an easier route I believe. The terrain is rough, short bamboo and not easy to get a rhythm going. There are rocks held into the earth that have a habbit of collapsing out from under you. The ridge gets quite narrow in places and you would not want to fall off.
The view from the summit is really quite something, down over Zambalas coastline, the Capones islands infront of you and higher mountains rearing up behind. From the summit a ridge line is followed across several slightly smaller “peaks” or rises in the ridge. It was at the last of these peaks I made a minor navigational error. Instead of traversing the ridge on my left down towards a col and into the valley and the pine forest, I took the right hand ridge, the most direct line towards the beach. It was very steep and soon I was forced off the ridge onto the slopes to the left (as you look out towards the sea) These slopes were heavily vegittated with razor sharp grasses and sharp pointy bamboo.
The slope is extremely steep in places, but the heavy undergrowth hides this fact and so often misteps are taken and you end up sliding down on your backside. I was more worried however about what snakes might be lurking in those grasses than anything else. It was impossible to go straight down due to the angle of slops, so a lot of zigzagging was needed. I eventually spotted the rocky line of a gully. This looked to be a waterfall in riany season, but was dried up at this time of year. It also gave some shade from the sun as the bamboo had grown high over the top of it. It was very steep, vertical in places, but being a rock climber by trade it was much better than trying to get through the foliage which was cutting and scratching my bare legs and arms. I also moved down faster as there was no more zigzagging involved.
Approximately 1 hour or so of descending this gully found me back at the foot of the mountain and in the beginnings of the pine forest and dried up riverbed. There are a lot of tracks around here and wild Caribou about. It would be easy to get confused and follow the wrong one. If you have a guide follow him, if you have a GPS follow that towards the Anawangin waypoint, if you have a compass follow approximately W/NW towards the beach. If you have none of the above, simply follow the dried up riverbed downstream. If there’s no water in it, remember water flows downhill not uphill. So follow the river bed downhill and you will get tot he sea eventually. It’s around 1.5km from teh foot of the gully I descended to the beach. The last part there is a freshwater swamp that you need to cross. It was around knee deep with fresh still water, I just waded through it as you are only a few meters from the campsite so the soaking clothes and feet was no big deal.
We spent one night camping at Anawangin cove before taking the boat with camping kit back to Pundaquit. I parked my car at a small carrinderia (restaurant) in the town that is owned by my friend.
Cost for the boat for my friend and his wife was 750 peso one way from Pundaquit to Anawangin
Cost for boat for 4 of us returning plus our kit was 1,200 peso one way back to Pundaquit
Cost for camping was 100 peso per person per night
The campsite is basic. It has a freshwater well with hand pumps for washing yourself or collecting drinking water. I’m not sure how drinkable it is, so take Iodine tablets or boil it well or both. I personally just sent a 5 gallon of purified water on the boat with our camping kit and then just used their water for washing the saltwater and sand off my body. There is no electric, so there is no KTV, although that doesn’t mean it was quite. There were some rather rowdy families there with a fondness for redhorse and talking loudly at the night time. I stayed on a Friday night and elft Saturday. I wouldn’t want to stay there Friday night peak season it gets very busy. There is a small shop, you can buy charcoal, and ice cold drinks for a premium price of course.
I’ve been told the next cove along is much more peaceful for camping, although with less amenities. But, I would be fine with that. You can send almost anything you need around on a boat anyway. If you don’t want to make the hike then it’s only a 30 minute boat ride with all your camping equipment to Anawangin cove.
Keep checking back on this blog for more information as I will be surely making another trip. There’s more mountains to hike and explore in that area, and I haven’t yet visited Capones islands either.
