Untamed beauty

- Aliwagwag falls is about twenty minutes by habal-habal from my home in Tagada-o. Around it is verdant rainforest. In the afternoon a drizzle usually starts and fog descends making photography difficult. What is easily accessible are these cascades just before they join a swifly flowing river which proceeds and gentles into the Cateel River past the flimsy suspension bridge to San Alfonso. If you are interested, I have a video clip (poor quality as it had to be reformatted) at this page. Cateeleños are proud of this scenic spot but there is concerned talk of how illegal logging is changing the area. Fog used to be a concern to anyone wielding a camera in the early days of the 60s and 70s. Now there isn't enough forest cover to breathe that out until afternoon. Fact: there was a recent collapse of the bridge which killed a few people. It had succumbed to excessive weight of a truck loaded with logs.

At our municipal building, there are displayed photographs taken when a group of cavers sought out the source of Aliwagwag falls. It was an arduous climb. At the end there were mightier falls than these cascades, with large boulders and caves.