Happy April

Our April started in the last week of March. The week prior to Easter is Holy Week and is taken very seriously here. If you want all the details, follow the link to: WIKIPEDIA. The short version is almost everything in the Philippines is shut down for the week.

April 1 was Easter and we had a combined sunrise service on the beach with another church in the area.

We took pictures of the sunrise after the service. It's going to be a lovely day:

When we returned from the beach, a neighbor was harvesting his rice. Normally, a threshing crew will hand cut the rice, carry it to the edge of the field and thresh it in a stationary machine. However, combines are being introduced into the area. Basically, they are tracked Bobcats with a combine as a body. They do not have a storage bin on them as a combine in the states would have. They have a bagging area and 1 or 2 workers ride on the side of the machine bagging the rice. The bags are then hand carried to the edge of the field.

We then returned to the beach to eat lunch with the church group.

A couple of months ago, our dog, not quite a year old then, was in heat and had many suitors. Mike would throw rocks at the suitors when they would come by. He was out there one day with a machete in hand and threw the machete. He made contact and that suitor ran off, yelping all the way home. After that, Mike kept the machete by the door to throw at the suitors. He hit a couple more of them, making them run off and yelp. Several neighbors thought it was probably a good thing that we do not have daughters if Mike was acting that way toward our female dog.

The morning of April 2, our dog, now about a year old, had her puppies. One brown puppy and 4 black and white puppies.

She turned out to be a very good momma:

Our "baby" now has babies, huhuhu.

To the north of us, there is a mountain view that looks over the bay, islands, town and rice fields. We have talked about driving/hiking there for some time. After the Easter service, one of our friends told us of a similar spot south of town, called Pungkay. We decided to go to Pungkay and asked some friends to come along. It was an easy ½ hour walk with 2 resting areas along the path.

This is the first resting area where you stop to pay the entrance fee (10 Pesos per head including the little ones). From here you can see the vast plains of Hinunangan - now being threshing season, we saw far below people harvesting rice and rice being spread out to dry under the sun:

The view of the surrounding area was amazing even from the first look-out:

Then you hike out some more to the second look-out where you can stop, sit and enjoy the view:

At the top we found the Pungkay Mountain Park sign.

There was ladder leaning against a tree and Flor and JJ decided to climb the tree.

You get a really good full view of the horizon from up here:

There was an overlook at the top that was constructed to look like a hand.

The "hand" provided a great panoramic view of the area.

After hiking back down the mountain, we stopped at Lourdes' in town to have Halo-halo, a refreshing concoction of shaved ice, fruit, jello, cereal, whatever you have on hand desert - a perfect ending after a walk up the mountain on a sunny day.