We were in the Cotabato region when the Maguindanao Encounter happened. We had to pass by several Maguindanao towns the day before the unfortunate incident. Part of the purpose of this blog, among other things, is to encourage others to travel to these wonderful destinations in the Philippines, but please do assess the situation in Mindanao before making any plans.
From Cotabato City, we rode a van to Midsayap. The fare was P50 and the trip did not last for an hour. It was already dark so I couldn’t see a thing on the road but after checking the map when I got home, I found out that we had to pass by a couple of Maguindanao towns again.
The first part of the rough road was still manageable. Then we got to the part where rocks on the road started to get larger. I was just riding a motorcycle but I was sweating like hell. My butt and thighs were hurting and when we stopped, I could barely walk. Please note that this wasn’t the worst yet.
We reached Brgy. Dado in Alamada around 7:30am. The habal-habal ride felt like forever.
We had batchoy and coffee for breakfast in a store owned by an Ilonggo family. I was surprised to see that people here spoke Ilonggo with the same accent as I have.
It was strange being in the Cotabato region. People spoke different languages in each town. You can ride a van and hear four different languages being spoken. One town would speak Ilonggo, then the people in the next town spoke Bisaya, some spoke Tagalog and a few spoke a language I don’t understand but I assumed it was Tausug.
The water was just shallow but the current was strong especially under the tallest drop. I amused myself by walking along the rocks and getting dumped by the cascading water.
There was a registration fee of P30 each and we had to write our names on a logbook. There were a few stores at the jump-off point and one was even selling what would become our go-to meal, pastil. We bought a few pastils for lunch.
After a few minutes of rest, we started the walk down to the falls. The start of the trail was still mud but they had already started cementing most of it so it wasn’t that bad. They said the steps numbered 500 but I didn’t bother to count. Maybe there were indeed 500 steps.
We forgot about all our pains when we got to the falls. It was the most beautiful falls I have ever seen so far.
