Footloose In My Native Land

BIMBO CABIDOG

Travel can be a gift. It is now being given to me by the Almighty. After all, He has carved destinations worthy to be goals of a lifetime.

I am thankful to be gifted with means to embark on those choice trips along the various lanes and byways crisscrossing my native land. Though quite late at my age, I am raring to explore its interesting sites, or wherever wanderlust takes me.

My journey kicks off on January 18 this year with a passenger-van commute to Ormoc, where I will saunter to some last-minute buys at the mall, and an abbreviated sight-seeing around the city’s core, after which I will check in for overnight stay at a hotel.

Ormoc harbour, west of the island of Leyte, is a busy concourse and gateway to the rest of the Visayas. I’ve been to the city many times before. It is just more than a hundred kilometers away from my hometown. Every visit to it would be a rediscovery of a place that never ceases to excite.

Early next morning, I will be taking a fast ferry to Cebu. Alighting at the port of call, I must immediately transfer to Mactan airport to catch an afternoon flight to Kalibo, Aklan. The town is the scene of the historic Ati Atihan Festival this time of the year. I am billeted for a two-night stay at a port town nearby for the bash.

Why Kalibo for starter? I cannot wait for more years to be added to my age (if they are still actually available) to revel in an 800-year old tradition. Filipinos somehow trace some strains in their genetic line to the Atis who started the joyous revelry in the 13th century.

Post-festivities, next hop is Caticlan to take a boat to Boracay. The resort sojourn over a couple of days is my first and maybe last time to be here. I have read quite a wealth of travel literature on the beach haven for tourists with finely grounded white sands and azure blue offshore waters.

My eye-witness affirmation or denial of the accolades heaped on the adventure and leisure destination of Boracay concludes the first leg of a journey that has yet to take me to more island gems in Western and Central Visayas, from Panay to Negros, Siquijor, Cebu and Bohol, onto sorties to treasured nooks up north in Luzon, followed by excursions back south to the scenic ecological frontiers of Palawan.

Right now, I am too awed to say a lot on this providence that certainly no other than God can bestow. I shall use the gift to be my way of seeing in full splendor the magnificent works that He has done. I take it as a pilgrimage over roads least and most traveled, to pay homage to Him sitting at the throne over all of creation. Glory be to the Father.

I know the journey is physically challenging. That only makes me more daring. The amount of energy, reserves of stamina, brain juices and vigour to spend may be forbidding, especially to a sexagenarian like me. But resolve and sheer will may just see me through.

Added to the feat of going places, finding accommodations for stay, and getting to settle in some modicum of comfort is the imperative of justifiably recording or journalizing almost every bit of the experience. But with the Force up there with me all the way, there is probably nothing I can’t afford.

Minus yet the gold medal at the finish line (of course I don’t know what sort awaits), measuring up to the requirements of the tour marathon – materially, physically and mentally, is for me already a lifetime achievement. I offer any triumph here and there as testimony to God’s greatness, even as the canvass of breath-taking natural wonders, and awesome human-cultural narratives expected to unfold down the road speak for themselves. They hail the Great One.

For God and country, I am venturing into the rediscovery of a homeland that countless generations of people with my human features have come to dwell on, live on and die on over millennia. I shall look anew at the priceless possessions of an archipelago to which national hero Dr. Jose Rizal attached the tagline “Pearl of the orient Seas.”

Truly, its allure renews and renews year after year. Its colorful vistas, island to island, do not fade. It is worth dying for. It is worthier living for. And it is worthiest traveling for, to see even for the hundredth time, every instance in a different light.

Is it the fault of my country to be so captivating to entice the foreigner to grab it? My excursions all over the Philippine Archipelago will find answers in the stories of folks of different ethno-linguistic affiliations. One reason may be that our ancestors dating back to the era of western colonial expansion were so unmindfully generous they did not mind sharing their riches. They did not care to be formidably fortified to shut out intruders, or dangerously armed to drive away aggressors.

For what did they actually have in that critical age of annexations by colonizers? They had jars, artistic bamboo huts, dugout kayaks, gold ornaments, pearls, pottery, metal works, grains and a hospitable nature that invited strangers to their food – notwithstanding if those have evil intents. They did not have massive fortifications, towers to watch the sea, bastions to hurl powerful counterattacks, canons, and the latest in military strategy.

That state of unpreparedness to fight out any invaders that loom on their shores – not yet the land’s allure, is perhaps the one that temptingly gave them away to the alien predators’ captivity: 350 years of monastery, 8 years of Hollywood, as a writer would put it.

Foreign conquest only proved the country to be a land of beautiful people, easy to make friends, fine and safe to be with. Hence, the precious gems are not only to be found in its 7,641 islands and islets. They are also in the gentle ways and warmth of local folks, not letting go of an enviable culture of embracing despite harsh outcomes, punishing trials and tribulations.

Throughout my younger years, I have been engrossed in narrow struggles to take note of them. Now is the time to underscore such traits in a journal of my wanderings that I vow to pen.

From my home province’s stretch of the Maharlika Highway in Leyte, I shall soon hit the road that detours to the cross-country corridor of Tacloban and Ormoc. There, ocean cruise and air flight will whisk me to the marvelous sea-and-land concertos of the Visayas. I will dip into my human roots that trace to the squat dark-skinned aborigines who crossed the land bridges of the geologic ice age from the Asian mainland to the southeast bulge of the continent, where they would remain when rising seas cut it off.

Then I go back to starting point to follow the road lacing northward into the rugged hills and shorelines of Samar, across the strait further north to the tiresome stretches of the Pan-Philippine road network throughout the Bicol Peninsula, up to the branching links of the Central Plain, the perilous coiling passes of the Sierra Madre range to Isabela and Cagayan, the dizzying Kennon Road climb to Baguio, out to the mountain-hewn Halsema Highway along the steppes of the Cordillera, the chilly heights of Sagada, and the monumental rice terraces of the Ifugaos in the sights of Bontoc and Banawe.

Stopping at the doorsteps of Kalinga along the Chico River, I will retrace down to the northwest strip of the Ilocoses, the coastal skirts of La Union and Pangasinan, and the Hundred Islands. The long and winding Luzon leg cuts off, where I fly southward to Palawan.

The following leg is crowned by a meaningful trip to the lately paved dirt roads of the Kris-shaped island that link the southern anthropological Tabon Caves, the picturesque entry at Sabang to the massive underground river – cited in 2011 as the Seventh Wonder of the World, the quaint laid-back city of Puerto Princesa, Honda Bay, the still lagoons of Coron, Nido and the Bacuit Peninsula.

Hereon the long journey nears its end. Though Palawan crowns it, last is yet the anticlimactic extension to the Mindanao leg. God willing, I pray that my strength doesn’t leave me yet up to here. One reason why I do this is to know my country more, and help my fellow countrymen know it more, for us to love it more.