The second day of our Central Mindanao adventure started early with our attempt to catch the sunrise of General Santos. But the group thinking had flaws. We didn’t wake up to the expected time because we’re assuming everyone’s not ready yet. The second leg of our trip is presumed to be the most hectic thus following the itinerary strictly is a must. But we’re pros. We could still make the best out of our chopped travel time.

This is the second leg of Central Mindanao. You can read the first leg in Maitum here.

General Santos Fishing Port Complex

We thought we almost derailed our visit for having no proper attire within the port premises. We were wearing shorts. But the port is accommodating for tourists that it has rentals for work clothes. And with proper attire, we headed to where the actions are.

Straight from the fresh catch of the fishermen, the yellow fin tunas are carried like this from boat to port

Then from General Santos port, the catch will be delivered elsewhere. First dibs.

We played a little guessing game. We’re to estimate the mass of each fish. And some weigh more than I do.

Albertowz tried to carry one fresh catch. He succeeded in the challenge. He’s immune of the next eviction because of that.

We were one week late in celebration of the Tuna Festival of General Santos.

The General Santos Port is a what you see is what you get kind of tourist destination. While it may not fancy some, getting to know the complexity of the fishing port that produces the largest volume of sashimi-grade tuna in the Philippines is an achievement unlocked.

Sarangani Highlands

So it’s like Tagaytay’s, not much of the elevation and temperature, but more of the vibes of the flora around. It has an overlooking view of the fishing industry complex. We haven’t eaten our breakfast yet. So Sarangani Highlands solved the problem.

The welcoming grounds

For Instagram #ootd purposes

Sarangani Highlands Garden is also offering hotel rooms and event venues

Autographs and guest log book, er plates, of the celebrities who visited the Paradise in GenSan

Search for Mommy D

Since we already had a taste of pineapples from Polomolok in our breakfast and had unanimously agreed that visiting Polomolok Pineapple Plantation of Dole would eat up our time in Lake Sebu, we dropped that itinerary. But Albertowz had one idea before heading north for South Cotabato – to pay a courtesy visit to Mommy Dionesia, the legendary mother of Manny Pacquiao.

Mommy D. has two residences in General Santos. We took the road to the wrong village first. Pressed by time, we reached the correct one but she already left. We missed her 25 minutes late. Though we travelled so far, boy I’m sorry we are 25 minutes too late.

With broken hearts and missed opportunity to be blessed by her, we proceeded to Lake Sebu. But the van, supposedly taking us straight to Lake Sebu, dropped us to Marbel. We thought we had still enough window of time for the next scheduled trip so we visited Christ the King Cathedral but it is still under construction.

And what amazed us before we left the province of General Santos in this trip was the KCC Mall. General Santos is the shopping capital city of the SOCCSKSARGEN region. True to that label, KCC Mall has full body Backscatter X-ray machines on its entrances. These were the same machines being used in Manila airports. We haven’t seen those stuff in Metro Manila malls. We grabbed some takeaways from Jollibee inside the mall. I was in awe to witness how hustlers my travel mates are in taking their rice meals while the van is moving.

Lake Sebu

It was a long trip to Lake Sebu. We noticed unique welcome roundabouts on every town we passed by. Upon reaching our destination, we hired habal-habal going to the famous Seven Falls and zip line of Lake Sebu.

Hikong Alo. The first of seven. Few-minute walk from the eco-park.

This is where we spent most of our times. Photography with T’boli clothing.

We got our outfit for only PhP 50 per person.

The wise men of Lake Sebu

Lakeserye, a travelnobela.

The original travel buddies in our group on their nth trip together

We call him, Alden, because of his dimples.

The Zip Line

But the highlight of all the highlights in our trip is the tallest zipline in Asia. For only PhP 250 per person, one can fly like Superman in two zip lines over five waterfalls. The other two waterfalls can be reached by hiking from the grounds. We requested each of us to be transported solo although the operators would normally join two or three participants per ride. It wasn’t a weekend and the volume of visitors was still manageable. The three in the group have our own GoPro cameras so we wanted to document our zip line adventure alone. Here’s my version:

Dwarfed by the seven waterfalls of Lake Sebu

Because the zip line fee is relatively cheap, we would want to try again.

But we’re chasing the last return trip at 6pm and we would like to visit the other lakes as well. Unfortunately, the lotus flowers in the lake are best photographed during sunrise and we got there in an underwhelming setting. We didn’t further explore. So we vowed to return to Lake Sebu next year and catch the picturesque lakes as seen on travel magazines.

To Tacurong

Our adventure on that day didn’t end in Lake Sebu. Because we were taught of the surest way to catch the ride to Tacurong is to go back to Marbel, we actually U-turned our way to our third stop, Sultan Kudarat. To be continued.