for most of us, that summer of 1986 was the very last one we will be spending together for a very long while. almost all of the group had graduated from college that year. while many of us were still staying in bacolod for the summer, others had gone to manila for their board reviews in nursing (lina, gigi d, etc.) and accounting (augie, grace, andy, etc.) the engineering guys still had a year of college left and spent the summer with the rest of us. we planned the summer outing for several days while we hung out at our favorite haunts... totong's wooden swing and an outcropping of boulders at the corner of what is now lopue's east. before the excursion itself, we had fun under the sun, playing "tubiganay" in villa angela, to welcome JCP home, in which i was part of the losing team and the members of the winning team took turns making "lakad" over my back (ugh!). we also played hide-and-seek. we were already done with the game when erle showed up. he was hiding so well that he didn't even know we had already quit for the day (LOL)! FUN!!!
for the outing itself, greg couldn't make it because he was going to manila to enrol in law school. but he made the arrangements for our accomodations in mambucal as his parting gesture.
we rode in a hired jeepney and jimboy divinagracia joined our class (one of our first "honorary" batchmates) and brought along his pick-up truck. we dropped by murcia market and jun bought live "halo" (monitor lizard) for our lunch.
i've never eaten this kind of animal before, much less cook it, but since i was the nutritionist-dietitian in the group, the task was, alas, assigned to me. good thing, bitoy insisted that the vendor should gut and skin the creature first and for added measure, he cut it up for us, as well. thank God!!!
(fourteen years later, i got to see other monitor lizards up close on my trip to palawan, but that's another story...)
when we reached mambucal, they gave us an old wooden cottage that had 2 bedrooms, a spacious living area and a kitchenette with a sink and running water (which i was definitely grateful for). erle was assigned to cook the rice. bitoy and i cooked the lizard, while nonoy tisoy, raymund, and anthony grilled the fish and porkchop. the others chilled out in the spacious living area and swapped stories while drinking orange juice laced with gin, i think! look at the smiles on their young faces here...
left to right: debbie, tindoy, chiqui, jun, bambi, and johanna
after the cook-out, we relaxed for a bit and posed on the stairs.
at the topmost step is jean natu-el. raymund and arnel on the second step after jean, nonoy tisoy beside sheila on the next step, tata on the step down, erle and totong last.
here is the same picture except bitoy took totong's place on the stairs.
the rice was not cooked well so "nag-orasyon si nonoy tisoy anay" and it turned out right. finally, lunch!!!
see how we dig in... that's tata, bitoy, arnel "ati" (partially hidden behind bitoy), nonoy tisoy, and raymund. teh, sin-o pa mauna kalaon kundi ang mga nag luto man eh. in fairness, the "halo" tasted like chicken. probably because it lives on a diet of chicken itself. lizard adobo, anyone? LOL!!!
(lantawa bala gingamit ni bitoy nga pinggan... taklob sang kaldero! si nonoy tisoy ya, taklob sang tupperware!)
a little later that morning, we all went up and followed the narrow trail that led to the famous seven waterfalls of mambucal.
at the first falls, we met some RAMS mountaineers coming down from the mountains, familiar faces from UNO-R. one of them told us to bring walking sticks to help us in climbing up the rock walls.
we skipped the first to the fourth waterfalls. the fifth falls was not a waterfall exactly but a series of mini-falls with a deep pool at the bottom which looked calm and clear enough for us to go swimming. chiqui stripped down to a bathing-suit. the rest of us made do with t-shirts and shorts. there was a lot of ribbing and kidding around in the water. the water was getting cold but we didn't mind it as it was totally refreshing. but about an hour of swimming and soaking in the cold water, we heard a rattling sound nearby. everyone acted as though it was nothing but then, one by one, we started getting out of the water, saying it was getting too cold for comfort. we decided to move back to the cottage as it was getting late. on the way down, someone asked what the sound was, and we all erupted in belly-laughs. it looked as though we all didn't want to let on we were scared by the sound... could be a snake, though, so it was better we left the pool when we did!
just before twilight, most of the girls had to go home. none of them brought a change of clothes to stay overnight. only i and jean natu-el (a friend of greg's) came prepared for an overnight stay, same with the guys. so we all parted for the day and had this firing-squad pic in front of jimboy's pick-up.
that night, we had dinner, played card games, and swapped college stories and high school anecdotes. the laughter was non-stop! but that could be the spirits the guys were imbibing that night... rhum-cola anyone?
from the bottom step, left to right: erle, sheila, raymund, tindoy, jean, bitoy and jun
same picture with totong replacing erle on the bottom
the next morning, i woke up to the chilly mountain air. everyone took a short dip in the pool and we decided to finish the hike up the mountain to reach the sixth and seventh falls. well, that was the plan! unfortunately, we got lost. the trail that was supposed to lead us to a short-cut actually sent us on a wild-goose chase.
raymund, jun, and jean had gone ahead of us. tindoy was carrying the big water jug full of ice. when jun signed to him across the half kilometer of distance between us if we still had water, tindoy removed the outer cover and overturned the jug to show we had ran out of water. playing a practical joke on jun, tindoy actually kept the inner cover screwed on because the jug was still full. LOL!
raymund, jun, and jean had to get water from a natural spring gushing out of the rock wall and mixed it with some orange juice powder that jean had brought along. oh, well!
at one point in the trail, someone stepped on a huge pile of carabao dropping... no one wants to admit that now. then we also passed a couple of pine trees with burn marks almost halfway thru the lower trunk. bitoy explained that it was the work of "kaingineros". what they do is hack out a portion of the trunk and set fire to the sap that oozes out. the sap is highly flammable so when the tree falls down, these people can reason out that it was an accident. sad!
it was at this point that totong asked me if i was strong enough to finish the hike. i was up to it, i told him! so gung-ho! later, bitoy teased him that he was asking me if i could make it because he (totong) was actually the one who wanted to stop but was too embarrassed to ask...LOL! bitoy is such a pest!
finally, after so much wandering and asking for directions (the girls had to do it because boys will never admit they are lost!), we got on the trail that would lead us back down to the resort. we had to hurry down so we had enough daylight to get home. we rode on the public transport and slept on the way back to bacolod.
all in all, it was a wonderful exclamation point to our last summer together.
after that idealic summer, mambukal was renovated. here's the entrance to mambukal resort today...
