Finding Pasto's Mountain Ranges

My husband's request yesterday was to go out and fly the drone. I have no complains about that because that means content for me. He wanted to go to Mabini, just two towns away from ours but the problem was that he had no idea where to find the exact location.

My answer was that we should just go and ask the locals, but the problem was when we reached there, the locals were not sure, we asked the habal-habal drivers because for sure, they are more aware of the places in their town. But they also ended up having arguments as to where the location was, my husband was showing them a video with the view.

Thankfully, one driver arrived at their parking area and checked the video, he immediately stated it might be Pasto but he is not sure because the road on the video is cemented while he is sure that in Pasto, roads are still rough and bumpy.

But even if we were unsure, we still went. Based on the map, this area is opposite to Benliw Dam and that has a beautiful mountain in front of it so I bet it is what we were looking for.

As we turned left to this intersection, we found ourselves facing the sun almost blinding us, we had to slow down to make sure we won't encounter any accident.

Just a few minutes of driving and we saw the hills and the mountain ranges from where we were seated. We opened our windows, inhaled fresh and cool air, even my little one was shouting, "ma, so nice".

Because we arrived a little late due to asking for the directions, we decided not to go any further and just take shots from here. The road indeed was bumpy at the start but we reached the concrete one and it was concrete all the way to where we decided to park.

It looks peaceful! There were motorcycles passing by every now and then so we headed to the grazing area where some cows were munching on, dropped our bags and started taking photos.

Life in the province is very simple, I saw a house on a hill, I found some smoke coming out from a distance and I bet someone is already preparing dinner! Except for the motorcycle engine sounds coming once in a while, we heard nothing here but nature, the sound of the birds, the cows mooing, the carabaos wagging its tail and the sound of the leaves flapping as the wind blows.

There's an skeleton house nearby so I headed to the opposite side of the road, left my little one with his father who was manning the drone and took photos of this side.

Short wild guava tree had somehow grown inside the skeleton house! I tried searching for a fruit but it seemed like there's none so I just used it instead in taking photos of the mountain ranges from a far.

From here, I noticed a nipa house too at a distance and they have a carabao behind the house! I walked further to get a better angle so to show the house as the subject, the curved road as the foreground and the mountain as background. I was using my 85 mm lens here. I thought of using the 28 mm but then I won't be able to capture this type of shots with a wide lens unless going close plus what I was aiming was to capture the mountains.

I called the attention of the carabao because I wanted it to be part of the picture. I surely adore the forms, slants, inclines, and arcs of the mountain behind the carabao!

It's just nice to be here with no other people around! Those on their motorcycles passing by were just watching us and carried on to where they were heading. At that moment, I wished we reached here earlier, we could have set up a picnic and enjoy the view too while eating something.

The sun was already setting! This skeleton house I used to get a sunburst shot of the sun and I looked over to see how my little one was doing. I was glad he was just behaved with his father. I hear music from where I was standing so I guess he was playing a drum video again. He loves playing the drums and at his age, he can now follow on some beat. He also knows the parts of a kit drum, the bass, cymbals, high hat, and the tom toms.

I got some lovely shots of the sun about to set and the carabaos, I suppose that's a mother and its young grazing. I fell in love with the mountain ridge at the back too!

Since the father and son were still entertained, I took more shots, walked over to where I can see some rice fields below us. The fields are green and I bet they are also showing signs of fruit now.

And since the sun was already behind the mountain, we are no longer getting enough light. I thought it was time to go so I headed back and as I was passing by, I saw some motorcycles, I took the chance to take a photo of them as they pass by the road.

I wonder how it feels like living here, there are no nearby neighbors, it must be very quiet here at night, and since there are no streetlights, I bet it's also very dark, perhaps the only thing that's shimmering would be the lights from above, or the house lights too from those neighbors located in the other mountain.

Now that I am imagining this, it is not impossible that soon we might go camping, we could pitch our tents here and watch the skies. It would be lovely!

As I walked down towards the road, I saw some locals and one of them was taking a carabao! I took a candid shot but he saw me, I smiled and asked if it was okay, he just smiled back and he passed by guiding the carabao to walk in the other side of the road. I wish we had some time to talk and ask them where's their house. But they were shy and just carried on.

Here's some drone shots! These are really nice, I am glad we really went that afternoon. And we are grateful to those habal-habal drivers who helped us out.