Botanical Gardens

On Sunday a group of us took a hike to the botanical gardens in the nearby Makiling forest reserve. Essentially a heavily forested area at the base of  Mt Makiling, we trekked through the botanical gardens for about 2 hours. It was a relatively easy trek but was surprised how big the gardens actually were.

The trek led us on a beautiful eco trail where we saw different types of trees and got a real taste of what a tropical forest is like. According to our Filipino guide, there are small monkeys within the reserve. Unfortunately we couldn’t see them but we certainly heard them. However, we came across two intimidating spider webs on the trail (clearly to catch prey like me when I almost met one face first!). Bar the close encounter with the colourful spiders we continued on our way and headed back to IRRI.

A nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.