2018
Touchdown Los Banos
We were starting the day with celebrating Benedict's birthday.
The group left the hostel in that morning and started their travel to Los Banos at 10:00. By 12:30 in the afternoon we arrived at Trees Hostel which is near to the one of the most prestigious university in Manila - University of the Philippines. After the lunch, the students of ISEP batch 5 (together with our teachers) walked to go to Makiling Botanical Garden. The tour started with a short video presentation which talked about the history of the place.
Abby Grace, our tour guide, mentioned the rules and regulations inside. First, she introduced us to the "Tree World" which contains flowering and non-flowering trees. Some of it are - Molave, Saraka, Bagtikan, Date Palms, Mangkono, Champakang Puti, and Traveller's Palm. Some of them were made to be papers, chairs, tables, roofs for the houses, and even perfumes.
For our second stop Abby introduced us the Philippinensis row, inside were the trees and plants which can only be seen here in the Philippines. Candle tree, Ungo and Molawin tree are the most common inside. She also said that these trees are too "hot" when it comes to the eyes of illegal loggers because they have these unique characteristics, which is when they are sold they came in higher prices.
Third stop was the Diterocarp which is the home to raptors like eagles, owls, snakes and rats. The trees inside are planted 30 years ago but their height didn't say it all. They are too small for their age because these trees are NOT FAST GROWERS!
Going around the place is not that easy because we had to deal with the steepness of the way to be able to get to another place. It was a pity that we hadn´t seen all of the Makiling Botanical Garden because of the dangerous snakes.
Nevertheless, during and after lunch we had and have a lot of fun with singing karaoke in the evening. And for sure: some of us are really good and talented singers!
Halina at makisaya sa amin (= Come and join our party)
