Thursday, April 9, 2009

In the Field: Mt. Pulag Climb Feb 13-15, 2009

One of the great things about studying Geography is getting outside and seeing beautiful places is basically research! This post is a bit late, but since my single blog post is getting lonely I figured it's about time to rev it up again. Mt. Pulag is either the 2nd or 3rd highest peak in the Philippines (according to my UP Mountaineer friends it's almost the exact same height as a mountain in Mindanao). Mt. Apo (grandpapo!) is the highest in the 'pinas. Anyway, I brought my friend's GPS with me (thanks Ate Lizz!) and tried to kept loading it up with batteries and tracking our progress. The result is this map in Google Earth which I threw together briefly.



That words "Bungo" means 'skull' in Tagalog and is labelled as such because we passed a cave full of skulls! Well, actually they weren't really hidden, rather on display! The group told me not to worry about NPA in the area but it was still a little freaky! But, I now have a good name for my new tent which I broke out for the first time on this climb. My tent is now called 'Bungo'!

Reminder to self for teaching geography in the future - always bring a GPS on any trip, it's something kids will love to play with and will probably interest them much more than a compass and map will. Also, it's not overly important that you turn these off on the plane (even though they tell you to) as my former colleague/boss who makes makes did on a trip to Palawan recently. It's pretty sweet to plot your flight pattern!

Hopefully it's not 2 months again before my next post. Possible thesis stuff to come next! I'm here in HK now ready to get started on it.