If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I’m tracing my travel history from 1974 up to the present. This post starts this series of 5.

I really don’t have much recollection of the travels outside of Cebu that I had during my childhood up until the end of my high school years except for a hazy recollection of accompanying my parents in Manila when I was still little and a vacation in Camiguin island off north Mindanao during high school. This was with the aspirants in the school’s seminary. Still there seems to be another vague memory of going to Ozamiz, to my father’s relatives.

Other than these, it was just within Cebu usually with my mother in the occasional trips at Fairmart, and Gaisano or watching movies in Colon. When I was already in high school, of course, there were the usual trips and gimmicks with my classmates.

During my 2nd year in high school, I was already collecting butterflies. From my home in Talisay, I traced the Mananga River up to the point of Lagtang. I have occasionally forayed into the woods of Buhisan in Labangon in search of these insects with my rudemintary net made from my grandmother’s stockings and eventually from mosquito netting.

I was always in search of possible collecting areas that basing from a map of Cebu that I had, I found this waterfall being pointed. It was Mantayupan Falls in Barili, at the western part of Cebu. Since I haven’t gone there or know of how to get to the place, I just memorized the towns leading to this municipality, asked about the buses that ply the route and one morning, hopped on one.

I was a bit afraid to ask anybody, not even the conductor but judging from the number of towns I have passed, I just felt that I arrived in Barili, went down the bus and hired a habal-habal that brought me to Mantayupan. I was disappointed that the waterfalls was almost gone as the waters were diverted for hydroelectric purposes. I did managed to capture some species but too few to even be a consolation.

A few days later, my mother found the bus tickets. I was reprimanded.

Map by Eugene Villar’s Lakbayan