Cuyapo Landmark

My hometown of Cuyapo, located in the province of Nueva Ecija, is a fairly flat area as most of the province. Nueva Ecija is often referred to as the bread basket of the Philippines because of its agricultural output, mainly rice. Because it is flat, any type of geographical landmark, even a fairly low elevation mountain, shows up prominently in the local landscape. There is a mountain (I am not sure that this even qualifies as a mountain, topographically speaking) that is easily noticeable from all over Cuyapo. As a young boy growing up in Tagtagumbao (barangay or village of Cuyapo), I remember this landmark being in a distant place towards a neighboring barangay of Bambanaba. The mountain can be seen from the backyard of my childhood home. I am not sure that this land feature even has a name. We simply referred to it as "bantay" or the mountain. Seeing the mountain again brings back a lot of memories from my childhood years in the Philippines.

The following are pictures of this landmark from several places within Cuyapo:

As shown on my blog's new header picture, the photos are from Tagtagumbao looking towards Bambanaba, no more than 400m from the backyard of my childhood home. I still remember from my childhood the acacia tree on the first picture, welcoming you with its "outstreched" branches coming back from a long walk from Bambanaba.






The next picture is from Cuyapo town proper, taken from my aunt's backyard.




The next group of pictures were taken from Bentigan, another Cuyapo barangay, during our early morning walks. During this visit to the Philippines, we regularly walked early in the morning starting between 5:00 to 5:30 AM. We would walk from Cuyapo town center to Bentigan and back. The regular walkers were me, both of my sisters, a brother, and a good friend of my brother. The Cuyapo Chief of Police and one of her policewoman joined us one morning for the walk. The walk takes almost an hour and a half. The walk afforded us great views of the mountain, as well as the farm fields, during the walk back to town just before sunrise.










Other landscape photos during our morning walks: