Welcome to WaypointsDotPH, a website of Philippine travels/treks, interesting destinations and GPS waypoints!

Here, we log travels and adventures that we and others have done around the Philippines. We detail trips with photos, essays, guides, tips and even navigational aids like GPS data, waypoints routes and many more. Please see our Gallery of Featured Destinations and our Waypoints List.

We feature two things mainly, Philippine travels/treks and GPS usage. We aim to fuse these two aspects together and make this website the GPS traveler's guide to the Philippines. Basically, it's your "what's-a-nice-place-and-how-to-get-there" website, with emphasis on the "how-to-get-there" an aspect which we believe is lacking in most other travelogues. One can expect to find a no-miss route for the novice visitor and alternative routes or short cuts for the seasoned traveler with or without a GPS unit.

It is our vision that through this website we can map out all places in the Philippines that we can truly be proud of. It is our plan to map as much points of interest as we can to show fellow Filipinos that this country is so blessed. This will not be limited only to places that are in excellent state though, as there are points of interest like sources of our indigenous crafts especially those that are dying out that need to be revived, our artists and artisans workplaces that need our support, regional cuisines that need to be rediscovered, produce and farmlands wanting to inspire such cuisines…people and places with issues aching to be addressed. Seeking these out and plotting them onto a map augmented with photos and first-hand narratives updated as needed, will definitely be a crucial tool from which to base plans or studies for assistance and development. Our strategy is to build an accessible and current database of our geographic points of interest, cultural and built heritage for students, professionals, enthusiasts or just concerned citizens from which concerted efforts on preservation and restoration can be worked out.

Through this website, we aim to highlight destinations from the local's point of view. Only the longtime resident will have the wealth of personal insights and endurance for detail and perspective be it historical, folkloric and/or contemporary, with the candidness and passion that no other travel guide can muster. Such is the case with one of our contributors, Gerry Lontok, a native of Pagbilao, Quezon. He is our window to see a place through his eyes and with the pride we only wish every Filipino had with regards to his hometown. Waypoints serves as an index to highlight places of interest as described by such contributors with links to their correspondingly more extensive webpages. With that in mind, we invite you to please see our Contributions and Contributors links.

It is our hope that through the Waypoints database, the traveler is not bound by traditional packaged tours and can create his own itinerary and expect to be guided as to time and distance involved and also be informed on en route features and interesting places within the vicinity of their particular destination. Tours can be planned not only to be "destination specific" but planned out by theme. Examples: A traveler might want to visit all the old churches in a certain region, or might want to hunt all the waterfalls in a province. Or perhaps one wants to investigate the state of Filipino weaving traditions and wishes to visit several weaving communities. These one can realize with the projected Waypoints database.

Tours planned by using the Waypoints listings could be alternative educational options for Filipinos and future generations by way of family trips, backpacking treks, school excursions or company outings where classroom or museum walls give way to make culture, history, geography, conservation and so much more come alive. Mapping out and documenting our Heritage Architecture and Historical Shrines that face neglect or demolition should create tours enlightening us on our ancestry and the urgency of Conservation of our built heritage and all other areas of our culture. Plotting out flora and fauna habitats especially those that are endangered will help us get a broader perspective on how best to care for these. As cited by Conservation International, our reefs are part of the "coral triangle", comprising the countries of Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Japan and Australia. This region supports the world's richest coastal marine biodiversity, mostly concentrated in extensive coral reef, mangrove and seagrass habitats. It has been told of us by many a foreigner that we are living in paradise. Let's document and preserve what we already have to harness these for greater things.

Locating the heart of ethno-linguistic communities will help us understand and appreciate each other as a diverse culture of Ilocanos, Visayans, Tagalogs, the Cordillera people, the Muslims and the lumads (highlanders) of Mindanao. The National Commission of Culture and the Arts lists a total of 78 distinct ethno-linguistic groups composing the Peoples of the Philippines. What a rich cornucopia of resources we take for granted! There is a crying need for more dynamic interchanges of arts, ideas and resources and we at Waypoints believe that, when these places, people and the things about them are laid out in front of us and made accessible, others will want to go see these places, people and things for themselves and will patronize them. Our patronage will keep our heritage alive, create jobs, at least elevate awareness at most improve education, spur countryside development and hopefully reignite our sense of nationalism.

Where possible, we aim to inventory our national patrimony for everyone's appreciation and stewardship, providing a "citizen's watch" if you will, as all photos and data can be made as current as need be. Natural geographical points of interest when made known and endeared by an informed citizenry will deter reckless developers and politicians from insensitive actions. If we knew how to get to our treasures and see them for ourselves, we would be in a better position to do something to protect, restore or rehabilitate them as we will inevitably love them. It takes a nation to build a nation so let's do what little we can as individuals as our collective efforts will ultimately count.

This website aims to promote responsible trekking while it attracts people to go to the destinations in the process. Some are of the opinion that prestine destinations can only remain prestine if they are kept secret from irresponsible tourists. We believe this. But, we also believe that we can not keep secrets forever. It is only a matter of time and irresponsible tourist would eventually get to invade the destinations. We believe that our only chance of conserving our beautiful natural resources is if we get to educate tourists to be responsile enough before they go and reach the prestine destinations.

When man one-sidedly insists that he is “to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth and subdue it using all its vast resources in the service of God and man”, one must remember too that man was “put in the Garden of Eden to tend and guard and keep it”. Gen 1:28, Gen 2:15.

Thus everything that we do on or with the earth should be to celebrate that which was ordained for man to do. Keeping this covenant meant the earth would continue to provide it’s bounty as brought in by the seasons which promised an uninterrupted cycle of seedtime and harvest for all living things. God provided us this mother nature as we know it for our pleasure and to provide for our needs, but we have to be reminded that God also instructed us to guard and keep it.

Earth reels from our pride and greed as we ignore nature’s laws and there is a desperate call for restitution. Stewardship is a state of the heart acknowledging that we are just caretakers or overseers of that which is ultimately not ours to posses and like it or not, will be passed on to the generations.