The first thing you notice about the Olympus Mju 720 SW is its sleek, compact design. Less than 0.8 inches thick, it fits snugly in your palm, like it belonged there. Neat. It’s digital, so you can kiss the hassle of loading and reloading film in your camera goodbye. You can preview pictures on its bright, wide-view, 2.5—inch color LCD screen with ease. Then there’s the instant replay. You can review your shots immediately, delete unsuccessful images, and aim for a better shot. But most other digital cameras can do that, too, you might say. Well, the SW spells the difference for the Olympus Mju 720.
SW stands for "shockproof and waterproof." Its rugged construction can withstand accidental drops from a height of up to five feet. And if water is your environment, you can take pictures at depths of up to 10 feet without the need for an extra case. Now, you no longer have to worry about damaging your expensive camera with all the rough handling that it gets from you whenever you’re off on another one of your adventures.
"The Mju 720 offers maximum versatility in all types of weather and in a variety of lighting and shooting situations," Bonilla says. You can take it anywhere with you, whether you’re at the beach, swimming, hiking, mountain climbing, or just disco dancing. Among its unique features is its revolutionary Bright Capture Technology from Olympus, which provides dramatically improved shooting in low-light conditions such as indoors, at sunset, nighttime, and underwater. Aside from its sharp 7.1-megapixel resolution and a 3x optical zoom that lets you get closer to your subject, it also has 25 preprogrammed settings for a variety of scene modes including landscape, portrait, night scene, available light, sunset, fireworks, cuisine, museum, behind glass and underwater, making it that much more effortless for you to engage in your favorite pastime: taking pictures.
So now you’re thinking, "Let’s test it." But where? Well, here’s where your next adventure begins. Let’s see, you’ve done mountain climbing, trekking, rappelling, parasailing, white-water rafting, but how about caving? Frankly, on my long list of adventures, I would put caving at the very bottom. Enclosed and dark spaces have very little appeal to me. Being stuck alone in a dark elevator once was a most unpleasant experience. Driving through a long tunnel is always rather unnerving. But hey, you’re on a mission here, to test the Mju 720. And a cave is a perfect place to do just that – where you have very little natural light, water droplets trickling from above, streams of water below, slime and mud pools to wade across, rough crags and tight crevices to squeeze through, and sepulchral spaces and shadows to capture your imagination. The perfect picture is just waiting for you.
So you head off to Nueva Vizcaya, 268 kilometers north of Manila, where you find the Capisaan Caves, said to be the fifth longest cave system in the country, with a length of 4.2 kilometers according to the latest survey. It has inspired speleologists to call it a geologists’ paradise because of the rich variety of rare formations inside the cave. Time to refresh your memory of what you learned in school, about stalagmites, with the "g" referring to those formations growing from the ground, as opposed to stalactites with a "c" referring to those formations hanging from the ceiling.
The Capisaan Caves are located in the mountain town of Kasibu, which used to be a constabulary detachment for the native Ilongots. To get there, you pass through pastoral scenes of rice fields being plowed and planted, of waterfalls and hanging bridges, of mountain slopes cleared and planted to citrus trees, of elementary schools neatly nestled at the foothills, and cell site towers on mountain tops, piercing the sky.
Nueva Vizcaya is often referred to as the gateway to the vast Cagayan Valley region. You enter coming from Nueva Ecija, passing through the historic Dalton Pass, which zigzags through a part of the Caraballo mountain range, which joins the mighty Sierra Madres. Still, the Spanish missionaries managed to reach these remote parts, leaving behind at least two old churches worth visiting – the St. Dominic Cathedral in Bayombong, the provincial capital, which boasts having the best-sounding church bells in the country; and the St. Vincent Ferrer Church in Dupax del Sur, one of the oldest churches in Northern Luzon. Constructed in the 16th century, it has an underground museum that houses centuries-old church artifacts. Outside the church stands a century-old acacia tree, said to be the biggest and oldest in Northern Luzon.
From what is old to what is new, Nueva Vizcaya is now being tagged as the Citrus Capital of the Philippines, famous for its perante oranges and other varieties like Satsuma and Washington Navel, grown on the mountainsides and sold along the national highway in what has come to be called Citrus Alley. With its towering mountains, picturesque waterfalls, and an outstanding cave system, the local tourism office also likes to promote the province as "The Adventure Alternative Up North."
The dictionary defines an adventure as an experience that is unusual and exciting. I’d say that discovering the wealth and beauty of Nueva Vizcaya is an adventure. Caving for the first time is an adventure. And taking pictures with the new, state-of-the-art Olympus Mju 720 SW is an adventure, too.