Segment III, Cebu Highlands Trail Project

The island of Cebu, located in the middle of the Philippine archipelago, is a highly-developed province consisting of a first-class urban center of Metro Cebu that holds together the cities of Cebu, Mandaue, Lapulapu, Talisay and Naga and the municipalities of Consolacion, Minglanilla and Cordova. It hosts an international airport and an international harbor and is the center of the country’s shipping industry.

Growing to a population of more than four million in today’s census, development had spread fast from the capital city of Cebu to the neighboring towns and cities where it created the drift of converting erstwhile large municipalities into new fledgling cities like Talisay, Naga, Carcar and Bogo which supplement the other already-existing cities, to include the industrial cities of Toledo and Danao.

In all, Cebu has nine cities and forty-four municipalities where seven of these towns are found on the satellite islands of Bantayan, Mactan, Poro, Pacijan and Ponson. By the natural design of its topography, Cebu’s development tend to move along the narrow strips of plains and shorelines going north and south where most of the urban centers and townships are founded.

Cebu is about 260 kilometers in length and about 50 kilometers at its widest. The island has a very mountainous terrain which is very rugged at its middlemost spine where a planned Trans-Axial Road is to be constructed. It is on these places where the Cebu Highlands Trail will be explored, developed and completed into a route – running north to south or reverse – that will be patterned after the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail of the USA, although some trails may have been or are now being converted into “vegetable highways”, a network of roads from the farms to the markets.

Terminal points will be at Bato, Santander in the south and at Maya, Daanbantayan in the north and, when hiked through, would take about fifteen to twenty-five days of walking into some of the most beautiful – a lot of it unseen – and rugged places in Cebu. In between will be the places where camp sites, bivouac sites, billeting areas, exit routes, evacuation areas, alternative routes, service routes, water sources and rest stops that will be identified and documented and will be integrated into this project. Segment routes will also be identified where easy dayhikes could be achieved by less-robust hikers.

When completed and when given media mileage, this will attract thruhikers, multi-day backpackers and segment walkers from here and abroad and would expose our upland communities, along with its distinct culture and different products, to tourism. There are still places in Cebu that have not had the opportunity of being visited by lowlanders and folks from the big cities, much more so by foreign visitors, and this would lend this project a very presentable achievement by Cebuanos doing something good for Cebu.

VISION AND MISSION:

~ To create a route that would traverse at the middlemost spine of Cebu from south tip to north tip or reverse.

~ To expose the upland communities, its culture and its products, to tourism.

~ To encourage Cebuanos to a healthy lifestyle of hiking and climbing its own mountains.

~ To put Cebu in the map of the international backpacking community.

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Segment III starts from Mantalongon, Barili and ends at Mantalongon, Dalaguete with billeting areas at Mompeller, Argao on the first night and Balaas, Argao on second night. Done on February 19, 20 and 21, 2015.