Home // Posts tagged "daranak falls"

Waterfalls You Can Bike to from Metro Manila

Waterfalls By Bike

There are several waterfalls you can bike to from Metro Manila

Metro Manila has waterfalls. Well, maybe they’re not exactly in Metro Manila itself. You will need to work a bit to reach these cascades. But if you’re a mountain biker, getting there is more than half the fun.

For a lot of people who grew up in Metro Manila, it can be almost hard to believe that there are waterfalls that are just an hour and a half away by car, or two and a half hours away by bike from the city. Waterfalls, after all, are part of mountain streams, which are in turn nurtured by forest watersheds. If you cut the trees in the forest, you eliminate the watershed, and you kill the waterfalls. Rampant deforestation in the municipalities and provinces around Metro Manila has probably eliminated a lot of these awesome nature spots. (This is what happened to Uugong Falls in Morong, Rizal.)

Still, the situation isn’t so bad yet. There are still a few waterfalls near Metro Manila, which means that there are still trees in the mountains to sustain them. And here are some of the waterfalls you can reach with your mountain bike.  Read more [+]

Running in Daranak and Calinawan

Nature's Trail Discovery Run Final Leg 2012

Nature’s Trail Discovery Run Final Leg 2012

Hands down, this is the best run I’ve ever participated in. Nature’s Trail Discovery Run in Tanay held last November 25 took its participants through beautiful mountain trails, through a cave, across a river, up a 600 meter high peak, down a postcard-perfect waterfalls, and dared us to test the limits of what we could achieve.

Initially, I had some doubts about whether I should sign up for the 21k trail run. I had done only one 21k before this, and it was over the relatively flat urban terrain of Fort Bonifacio. Running up steep rocky slopes sounded like a great deal of punishment, and someone told me that all the ascents and descents of a trail run added a few extra kilometers to the official 21k length of the course, so that it was actually going to be more than 21k. I was wondering if I should enlist in the shorter 10k race instead. Read more [+]