The Initao-Laguindingan Forest Reserve: A Forest By the Sea

            Midpoint between Iligan City and Cagayan de Oro City is a pay toilet for women and men. The pay toilet is newly constructed and made of modern facilities to ensure cleanliness and hygiene. The reason why the toilets were constructed is because years ago, drivers and travelers who are caught by the call of nature in the middle of the highway take their comfort there, behind the giant century-old trees, bushes and vines. It is also one of my favorite places when I travel, not because I take comfort there but because the place is comparatively cooler than the other towns. The cool temperature, the giant old trees that reach out to each other from the other side of the highway to the opposite site, the bushes and vines that fall intricately from the tree tops, are what makes of a forest. Because that place, with the pay toilet for travelers is a forest reserve called the “Initao-Laguindingan Protected Landscape and Seascape.”

            It used to be our playground. Spelunking and diving was the name of our game. There are 30 caves inside the 1,350 hectare forest but there are only 4 accessible caves. We have explored the four, all of them. These are not the normal caves we know whose entrances juts from the sides of mountains. In this forest, the caves are cracks on the grounds, behind giant trees and hidden by a complex web of entangled roots. There are bats inside that fly amok with the sound of humans, there are muddy regions where a slip here and a fall there is necessary, there are stalactites and stalagmites, there are inlets of different shapes and sizes and different levels of difficulties that open to different holes and demands exploration. There are caves with the same entrance and exit. But there are caves that bring us from one side to the other side of the forest. This is what we consider as awesome. There are caves that start from the dry earth and end up spectacularly at the mouth of the deep blue sea. This is what we call enchanting!

            We camped out one summer inside the forest overnight complete with our tent, cooking utensils and food. That was years ago, when there was no government intervention in the name of entrance fees and strict regulations. We spent the night in front of a bonfire; small and manageable enough not to cause a forest fire and alarm the authorities. We swap ghost stories while listening to the chorus of insects, night birds, and the unknown forest dwellers; the echo of the wind; the lonely sighing of the trees; the cracking of the fire; and the sound of the strong waves pounding against the cliff. At early dawn we woke up to a scheduled bird-watching, we crossed the highway to the other side of the forest where an abandoned old hospital was situated. One would wonder why of all places a hospital is built in the middle of the forest. We felt invisible eyes poking at us and heard the howling of its invisible inhabitants. Very scary, but we wanted to see the birds, they said there were tarsiers and flying lemurs too. We wanted to see everything! But we only heard the first notes of their morning songs; we did not see any of them because we forgot that we cannot see anything yet because it is still very dark. So we paraded back to our tents and dozed back to sleep. At sunrise, we started swimming the deep blue waters. The waves were nasty but so were our sense of adventure. Today, there is a big sign that warns, “No Swimming During Big Waves.” And the adventure of the generation is killed! The waves were not enough for us, so we climbed up the cliff where our tent was and jumped off some 30 feet high straight into the hungry waters. The point where we emerged and floated is in front of large openings on the wall of the cliff - those are caves with water inside, like the ones at the Hundred Islands. Today diving is prohibited because the government spent 8 million pesos to fence the beautiful cliffs and the whole perimeter of the forests. Very disappointing! Visitors today can only sneak peek at the beautiful scene; the sea, the pounding waves, in the backdrop of the cliff, and the trees hanging for dear life lest they fall and drown into the water.

            We spent a good part of the afternoon watching the wilds at its best entitled, “The Battle between the Snake and the Lizard.” There was a snake of a considerable size and a lizard of matching size. We don’t know how conflict between the two started. But it must be a war in competition for food. They were charging at each other but as soon as one clutches the other they began biting, the snake biting the lizard and the lizard clamping its teeth on the snake’s tail. We meddled in their affair by throwing stones on the heated duel until their biting was severed and the chasing and charging begins again. There was no casualty in the battle because the cowardly snake snaked its way quickly into the cliff and into the deep blue sea followed by the equally furious lizard. And the show ended right there.

            The forest park offers wanderers and visitors unpredictable shows of the wilds like we did. There are hundreds of species of trees in the area; in fact some already are assigned numbers for accounting. The sea prides itself with a healthy diversity of corals and sea life, including giant turtles that lay eggs by the cliff. Today, there are benches and shades for visitors and the main roads were concretized for vehicles’ access. There must have been hundreds of trees painfully cut for the purpose. I should worry, but the footpaths made by forest trekkers since the forest was discovered are still there giving away clues to the hidden and best parts of the park.