At the Top of the Toro-toro

I have always wanted to climb the Toro-toro and see what’s on top of it. The peak, which roughly means “like a bull,” is one of the most distinctive in Cotabato Region. It looks like a stationary giant bull from afar, but what made me interested in it is that it looks like a volcano. At the top, it dips at the center, and I suspected that it might have a crater. I finally got to find out on Good Friday this year. With my younger brother, some nephews, and some locals, I scaled the mountain.

The Toro-toro can be seen both from Kulaman Plateau and Allah Valley. As far as I know, most people in the plateau can recognize the Toro-toro. Sadly, I can’t say the same for the people in the plains. Perhaps it’s because people living in the towns of Bagumbayan and Senator Ninoy Aquino get to see the peak a little more up close whenever they travel between the plains and the mountains; they get to be awed by the size and majesty of the peak. In the Allah Valley—specifically the towns of Isulan in Sultan Kudarat and Norala and Sto. Niño in South Cotabato—the Toro-toro, though still distinctive, gets swallowed by the beauty of the entire mountains, specifically the Daguma Range. The range is known for its ridged almost-treeless slopes.

On our way up the Toro-toro. From the nearest hamlet to the peak,
the trek takes about two hours.

The nearest settlement to the Toro-toro is the hamlet of Sinaban, which is part of Monteverde village in Bagumbayan town. From the hamlet, my companions and I had to walk for an hour to the foot of the Toro-toro. It’s really difficult to identify where the foot of the Toro-toro is. It seems to be a huge hill on top of huge hills on top of a mountain range. I’m not also sure if I should call the Toro-toro a mere peak, a hill, or a mountain. For the purpose of giving you directions, let us consider the highest spot where there is a house and source of water as the foot of the Toro-toro.

My companions and I rested for a while at the house and filled our water containers. I knew by this time that the peak of the Toro-toro didn’t have any body of water, so the likelihood that it had a crater was nil.

We continued the trek. This time, the slopes were much steeper. The first slope we had to scale was a clearing that stretched for about two hundred fifty meters and inclined by at least 70 degrees. That alone sent me and my brother almost breathless. Remember that we had been walking for an hour before that, over a dozen hills. We could only look in awe at our companions ahead of us. Being locals and used to working in the farm, they seemed to have not broken a sweat. Their raucous conversation had not ebbed. They even ran and raced against one another every now and then, and once in a while, they would stray from the path to hunt for spiders and make the poor creatures fight in a tiny stick.

I fall behind my fellow climbers because I take photos. But that’s just an
excuse really. At this point, I have to stop every after ten steps
to catch my breath and ease the pain in my legs.

The forested part of the Toro-toro was a little disappointing, to tell you the truth. There wasn’t much animal life in it. There seemed to be more birds in our yard at home at any given time than in my path to the peak. A bird or a pair chirped every so often, but other than that, the Toro-toro was quiet, which was disquieting. Not that I wished to bump into wild and possibly hungry animals, but I hoped to at least have some hint that the forest was still home to deer, wild boars, monkeys, pythons, hornbills, and many other species. Sadly, the only assurance I received was the information from my nephews that wild boars still roamed the northern foot of the peak and some of their neighbors had in fact gone there to hunt the animals.

Now don’t mistake me for an environmental activist. As someone who grew up in a poverty-stricken farming village, I believe that we should by all means exploit our natural resources to not only feed the hungry human beings but to give them the educational and economic opportunities that everybody deserves, but we should not do it to the extent that other species are driven to extinction.

By the time my brother and I reached the peak, our seven companions had built a fire and had been lounging on the grass and dead leaves for some twenty minutes. We joined them. We stayed at the peak for about half an hour, talking about mundane things. Check out the short video I made.



The peak of the Toro-toro isn’t much different from a low-lying rainforest. It was filled with trees, but while the trees at the foot of the Toro-toro grew as high as thirty meters, the trees at the top grew no higher than fifteen. The wind was cold, and I stayed most of the time near the fire, warming my palms against it. The fog was heavy. My jacket got damp after I left it on the ground for several minutes. Nothing could be seen beyond twenty meters. My nephews said you could see Kulaman Plateau or Allah Valley if you climbed a tree, but I didn’t bother to. I was too tired to climb a tree, and I went up the Toro-toro to see what’s in it, not to see what’s around it.

The interesting fauna at the Toro-toro included pitcher plant and rattan. I had thought that the pitcher plants there grew on the ground. I was surprised to see them high above the trees. I suspect that they used to be everywhere, but because their habitat had been disturbed by humans, only the ones above the trees had survived. As to rattan, it’s a common rainforest plant, of course, but what struck me was that they didn’t grow in a thick cluster like bamboo, so gathering them must be difficult and time-consuming. I understood better how much effort had been put into the rattan hammock and some furniture we have at home.

Because we headed to the Toro-toro after lunch, it was already dark by the time we got down to its foot. We spent the night in one of the very few houses there. We had a boodle fight for supper; we cooked in the house the rice we had brought, spread it on a banana leaf, poured the content of a couple of canned goods on the rice, and ate with our hands. I was tired and starving from the long walk and arduous climb, so the food for me tasted so much better than I suspect it really was. We slept on the wooden floor. Because we had not brought with us any mat, the owner of the house lent us his tarpaulin, which he spreads under the sun at daytime and to dry his corn and other produce on. The next morning, we all shared our observation that the foot of the Toro-toro wasn’t as cold as our respective home villages. It must really be the temperature in the place, or it must be because we had been packed on the floor like the proverbial sardines.

The walk to the Toro-toro starts at the hamlet of Sinaban, where boxing
has a twist. Too bad, we missed the event by a few days.

Holy Week in Bagumbayan Town

My companions were laughing at how badass we must have looked, and in my mind I told myself I had no business being with them. As a thirty-year-old, I was supposed to be mature and responsible. I had no business riding a motorcycle in a rocky and sloping road with five other guys. Even if the motorcycle was designed to carry several passengers, it still didn’t have enough space for us. Two among us had to sit on the tank in front of the driver—sideways, one on the other’s lap.

My companions, including the driver, were my younger brother and my nephews. They were aged sixteen to twenty and thus had an excuse to be wild and free and stupid. I had none, except maybe for the fact that I didn’t have much choice. Riding the motorcycle all together was the most efficient way for us to get where we were headed.

It was Good Friday of this year, and we were on our way to Guano—a sitio (hamlet) of Masiag village, Bagumbayan town—to explore the two caves in the area and watch a series of horse fights. We had come from the nearby village of Monteverde, where the previous day, Holy Thursday, we scaled the Toro-toro, one of the most distinctive peaks of Cotabato Cordillera.

The road between Masiag and Monteverde, just like most of the roads in the mountains of Bagumbayan, made for a most inconvenient ride. We were a little lucky because El Niño had been going on for months and the road had been dry. We only had to negotiate protruding rocks. During rainy days, the rocks, exacerbated by mud, could make the road so dangerous that many people traveling in the area for the first time would cry, swear not to come back, or both.

Our cramped arrangement elicited jokes from my nephews about squashed penises and torn asses. The whole thing was a harmless joke for them, while I was thinking that if my nephew who was driving made even just a minor lapse in judgment, or one of us passengers moved when we were not supposed to, it would be such a tragedy for the entire family. My parents would be left childless. Fortunately and unfortunately, I didn’t have to worry about accidents. The mere act of breathing was difficult. Whenever the motorcycle was running downhill or along a stretch of half-buried rocks, our chests would press or bump hard against each other, which made me understand the pre-mortem agony of stampede victims.

The ride was over in just thirty minutes or so, but because mortal danger hanged in the air in every minute of it, it felt as though we would never reach our destination. It was the most dangerous part of my four-day visit to the village of Monteverde, specifically in Sitio Miasong, where my cousin and her family lives. (On our way back from Sitio Guano, two of my nephews rode other motorcycles.) The ride, though, was neither the most challenging nor physically demanding. As mentioned earlier, we climbed a mountain and explored caves (which also involved climbing mountains). We also helped empty a pond to harvest the fish in it, watched a horse-fighting event, and spent idle hours with relatives catching up on one another’s lives. It was an experience worth sharing, I believe, and in the coming days, I will make additional posts on some of those activities.

Photos: (1) It seems to me that there are balete trees everywhere in Sitio Miasong. The tree normally starts as a small plant that clings to and sucks the life out of another tree. (2) The mouth of Guano Cave looks big in this photo, but I tell you, it’s way bigger in person. (3) My brother tries to hide his exhaustion behind a smile. The peak of the Toro-toro looks so near on this spot, but the worst of our trek is yet to come.