Fuego takes on Pinatubo

"CLANG!" goes the front differential housing of our Fuego Sport as we struggle over a particularly large boulder during a stream crossing. I cringe from the sound as I feather the throttle. "Okay lang iyan," says Manila Bulletin’s Aris Ilagan. "Just remember’, he adds, ‘it’s not your truck." Oh yes, I forgot. "CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!" We cross that stream and head on for the next five or so.

Trust Isuzu to be game enough to provide two stock units of its Fuego Sport 4x4 pickup truck to cross the wastelands of the Pinatubo range, lahar, boulders, and streams and all that. No winches, no extra skid plates, no snorkels; just the units as fresh as can be after more than a dozen thousand kilometers on the odometer at the hands of the media in previous occasions.

Trust Isuzu also to submit its 13 participants from the motoring media to a grueling 7.5 kilometer trek (read: we walked) up to the volcano’s crater lake after there was no more usable trail for our units and a convoy of off-roaders from the Angeles City 4x4 Club.

Pinatubo blew up in the early 90’s and, in no small way, ruined a lot of good folk’s lives by covering everything in tons and tons of ash and making a lot of sound and fury in the process. Now those same folk try to make a living any way they can, one of which is to guide tourists up to summit as part of the Department of Tourism’s ecotourism program.

For P500 a day, a guide in the town of Santa Juliana in Capas, Tarlac will take you up and back. He’ll try not to keep from laughing as you slip, slide, sweat, stumble, and whine up the trail, a trail he knows like the back of his hand and climbs up and down every day. If you don’t have a four-wheel drive vehicle, you can get a ride for P2,500 to P3,500 that will take you across the Sacobia River bed.

A 7.5 kilometer walk is no big deal until you throw in withering heat, pebbles, streams, ash, and boulders everywhere in the canyons going up to the crater. It’s impossible to walk in a straight line for more than a few meters because the trail goes every which way. Up, down, left, right, jump, and crawl... this pretty much resembled the walk of other members of our motley group who’d downed a few brewskies in "Diane’s Music Lounge" the night before.

God help you if you forgot to put on sunblock on that trek because there’s precious little shade. Two hours into that trek, a US Marine Super Cobra helicopter loaded for bear flies over the trail, doubtless on its way to beat the crap out of some harmless hills as part of the Balikatan war games. They did not give us a lift, although they didn’t mistake us for targets either.

Resting every hour or so — somebody forgot to bring Diane’s Guest Relations Officers for those neat outdoor massages-, we made it up to the mildly sulfurous crater lake in three hours. We then more or less collapsed at the summit before a good old, outdoor lunch and a dip in the lake. Then we had to go back down. I made it back without stopping for breaks in an hour and a half, thinking I could cool down ahead of the rest in one of the Fuegos. Of course, I forgot to borrow the keys from www.drive.com.ph’s Eric Soriano, who was about 30 minutes behind quietly enjoying his own little Death March.

Once everybody had made it back, it was time for a little fun with the trucks. The Fuego Sport’s bumpy ride is annoying on the road, but you learn to thank those stiff leaf springs in back the moment everything turns rocky, dusty, or gravelly. Especially when you’re doing your best Paris-Dakar rally impression in the race back to civilization.