#38 A Country Road

www.PostcardsFromManila.com

Even the mid-day sun conspires with us when we're on safari.

While driving to a nearby waterfall, we drove through a thick grove of trees that casted the most incredible shadows on the road ahead.

But on a country road even beautiful shadows isn't enough to interrupt us from our journey... until we chanced upon a family on foot. Their strikingly colorful clothes leapt out from the natural earthy colors around them. It was a sight too good to miss. Enjoy.

#37 Shaft of Light

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We all know what a strangler tree does. It starts out as a vine on a forest floor. Then it climbs high up a host tree and drops its roots down to the ground. As its roots thicken and multiply, the host tree is eventually strangled and rots away, leaving a hollow core around a convulated mass of roots.

But in Baler Aurora, we found a story that didn't end there.

We went to see the biggest living tree there, a strangler as well, but this one continued to drop new roots until it became a monster. They say at least 50 people holding hands are needed to circumnavigate its entire breadth.

We found a group of children innocently playing nearby. Coupled with a stray shaft of sunlight, we found a composition worthy of the largest living thing in Baler. Enjoy.

#36 A Pretty Poison

On Digisit beach in Aurora, shortly after sunrise, the color has all but disappeared from the sky. But with the sun's warm sweet rays side-lighting everything else around us, that's where we decided to point our cameras.

That's when I noticed this beautiful flower on the ground, having fallen from the tree above. The locals called them Butun (our Ivatan safari leader called it Vutun.) Thanks to Google, the scientific name is Butonica rumphina, or more commonly known as the poison tree.

Poison what? Yup, poison tree. The locals grind and mix the leaves and flowers to form a liquid that they use to temporarily stun river fish. Organic cyanide fishing of sorts, I guess.

Pretty yet poisonous, just like many other ironies in life. Enjoy.

(photograph has been cropped slightly to improve composition.)

#35 Fingers-Of-Light

This was our very first sunrise on the shores of Baler, a town on the coast of Aurora province facing the Pacific Ocean. We expected a ruggedly wild coastline and were not disappointed: outcrops rising from the shallows amidst relentlessly pounding waves.

We had been up since 4am and it was pitch dark when we got there. As the sky lightened up, there was too much cloud on the horizon to allow a dramatic entrance of the sun. I needed a way to multiply the light in the sky. And fast. Further down the beach I stumbled onto a shallow body of very still water, separated from the surf by a mound of sand. Still water reflects... now to find a spot to plant my tripod that would put this body of water between me and the rising sun...

The sun rose slowly, even teasingly, as the dawn wore on. The thick clouds held back the dawn's fury but allowed its "fingers of light" to paint the morning sky. Coupled with the mirror-like foreground of the pond, it made waking up early that morning worthwhile. Enjoy.