A Date with Leeches - Bulusan Volcano

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First, a caveat - this event took place many years ago.


…. It was like I was transferred into the movie called “Fern Gully”. All the plants around me were of all kinds of ferns and that they seemed to fill my whole vision. That moment was so magical that I wished I could take it all in. I found a big rock and sat on it, and with a half smile filling my lips, I scanned the whole area. I felt like I was in the middle of God’s lovely creation.

Then they started coming. I saw one on my boots. My chinky eyes widened. Then another suddenly jumped on my wrist! Leeches! Lots of them! That panic-filled moment made me realize that I was in the middle of a leech country. The one on my wrist had anchored itself and started sucking my blood. And then I lost my wits. I tried to brush it off real hard. It did not budge. I saw its body moving and undulating with regular rhythm. It was getting fat. I really lost my wits! I pulled it off and its body lengthened by the force of my pull. I got it! Still panicking, I brushed off several others creeping on my boots (the whole scene took about 30 seconds but it seemed like an hour). Then I ran. I ran real hard and real fast.

***Leeches are some of the most unwanted surprises in tropical rainforests. Always thirsty for blood, they usually wait in ambush among leaves for the unlucky mammal that passes their way. When they sense that something is coming near them, they excitedly lock on their target and spring forward. On contact, they immediately clip on the skin and start sucking in the blood of their unlucky victim. A hungry leech usually looks like a piece of toothpick, but the moment it gets enough blood, its body length decreases by half but its diameter increases to about three times.

There are quite a number of leeches. The most common are the limatik. I would guess that about nine out of ten leech hits among mountaineers was caused by this creature. There are leeches that specialize in selecting sensitive body parts like eyelids. I saw this specialist at work in the Bulusan climb. A member of the Ayala Mountaineers group was bothered along the trail by what seemed like a piece of dirt that got stuck in his eyelid. He endured it for about two hours and finally tried to figure out how to remove it when his group reached the campsite. His friends probed his eye trying to find that piece of dirt. What they found instead was already a bloated leech that feasted on his eyelid. So with a piece of tweezers, they carefully removed the leech.

Aside from specialization, leeches come in varied sizes. The biggest I saw was the one that made a fine skin decoration on the leg of my friend, Rica Bueno. Our group crossed a knee-deep river in the municipality of Pangil in Laguna Province. After crossing the river, Rica felt something sticking on her leg. To our shock, what we saw was a big leech about the size of my small finger and seven inches long. Rica went crazy. I tried to pull it off but my hand slipped through its slimy body. Thinking fast, I wrapped my tubao around it (much like when you use a piece of cloth to open a bottle of soft drink) and then pulled it off real hard. Everybody heaved a sigh of relief as we watched it wriggle its body on the riverbank.

Leeches are not found anywhere. Their favorite spots are damp areas and sometimes with standing waters. They are at their least number during dry periods but they seem to bloom at the onset of the rainy season. As one gets to know better this thing, he will find out that it is not really horrifying. It’s as if when you got a taste of its saliva, you will not be afraid of it anymore. The first encounter with a leech is always the worst time. The following encounters become like an ordinary event. Sometimes, you see one creeping on your pants and you say, “oh, a leech”, without any adrenalin increase. You will instead get a piece of a stick and gently brush it off like a harmless insect. Sometimes after a day’s hike, you would notice blood on your socks. You may wonder where that blood came from, but when you remove your socks, you would see that two or three leeches had a grand dinner on your feet. This time, you may say, “Oh, gosh. They got me”

Some guys, though, never get over their fear of those tiny creatures. So they bring all sorts of potions to help them ward off any leech attack. The three most frequently brought items are cigarettes to sear the animal and make it detach itself, tobacco leaves because leeches don’t like its smell (I wonder, can they really smell?), and if a wary hiker knows he’s approaching a leech area, he’ll put on soap on his legs.****

So I got through the leech country and continued my hike through the Bulusan forest. The next two hours was uneventful, just full of huffing and green scenery. The surprise came when we were nearing the edge of the forest. What filled our eyes was a gigantic dead crater! And we were in the middle of this huge earth surrounded by towering ridges. This was to be our campsite. The crater had about two kilometers diameter of open space. The soil was mostly sandy and there were patches of tall cogon grass. Because tall mountain walls surrounded us, there was a constant blowing of winds. Tents had to be firmly secured and backpacks had to be put inside to add weight to the tents. Those who did not see the wind as a threat to their precious gear saw their unsecured tents roll over and over through the open space. Some aluminum and fiberglass tent poles were broken.

Dinnertime. We had to eat inside our tents to prevent having sand as part of our meal.

The morning that came was a foggy one. We prepared for an assault of the peak and started ascending through very thick cogon area. It was a good thing that there were many of us hikers and I did not fear getting lost. The cogon grasses were about six feet high. Just try to imagine if you get lost in the middle of this ‘forest’.

When I reached a smaller peak, I saw all the climbers huddled in the very cold and foggy air. A decision was made to abort the assault. It was too foggy and consequently dangerous to try to reach the peak. We just stayed there for about 30 minutes savoring the “success” of our climb before we started heading back. Some wise guys showed everybody how to have fun on the cogon grass. We all became like children again as we made the grass like playground slides. I had the unlucky moment of encountering a veteran (AKA old) mountaineer and he castigated me by saying I was destroying the trail. So much for great fun there.

Noon was a combination of lunch and break-up of the campsite. Although we passed through the leech country again, I made a wizened decision not to stop there. Much of the trails we passed through were not the same ones. And to our surprise, the end part of the hike was a nice soda water spring resort called Masacrot. This time, we finally got huge rewards. I got a nice, complete bath (in soda water!), a real comfort room and a mini fiesta just for us tired and hungry guys

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