Foot and Fire

Our roadtrip from Roxas, Oriental Mindoro where the Montenegro Lines RORO from Caticlan, Aklan arrives, to San Jose, Occidental Mindoro where the Tamaraw Sanctuary and the Pandan Island is closely located , can be summed into three words: Forest, Slopes and Ricefields. The forest is lush green and richly stood as sentinel to the national highway which is sloping and curving so that we feel that we are riding with the "cool drifters." After the long stretch of forest, the sight of golden palay is so cool and the stretch of the ricefields awed us. After passing by stretches of palays being harvested and after kilometers of palay laid on the national highway for drying Pinoy-style, we saw NFA bodegas. We were expecting to eat the local rice produce. To our disappointment, we did not partake of the juicy newly milled rice as the carinderia and the Jollibee in San Jose, Mindoro did serve us dry and not tasty boiled rice. At any rate, here are my photos of the road. ...

In front of the Municipal Hall of San Jose, Mindoro. We arrived in San Jose, Occidental Mindoro with grand hopes of meeting a tamaraw. After some moving around the municipality, tasting their buko shake and buko empanada and feasting on their lutong bahay consisting of banana heart in coco milk and jackfruit in coco milk, we headed to the white house which houses the DENR office located in Brgy. San Roque just 20 minutes away from the main town. It is there where we were supposed to secure a permit to get to the Tamaraw Gene Pool where a tamaraw in captivity is being studied by the scientist. The same is three hours away from San Jose (P800/jeep back and forth) and one can sleep over there in the clubhouse (P100/pax). Contact No. 09359668992 and 043-4911236. Since the mountain where the Tamaraw Sanctuary is located is far, we dismissed the idea. We totally skipped the tamaraw since we want to go to Pandan Island and Apo Reef only to realize, after some asking, that the road go...