A JOLLY GOOD TRIP IN BADIAN

IT WAS IN THE morning of June 12, 2009 when me and my office mates left Mandaue City for Badian in the south. Nine of us from Tactical Security Agency and five from Mac II Auto Sales were comfortably squeezed inside a Toyota EX 20-seater air-conditioned shuttle bus driven by Joseph Rojo. The objective: a team-building affair at the Librando-Alquizola Private Resort in Matutinao.

From Tactical Security were, of course, moi, Joe Patrick Larena, Omar Pace, Marylou Cagang, Eddie Alberca, Grace Villar, Noel Ronquillo, Liza Sesante and Al Albaciete. From Mac II were Tellie Aguilar, Ginalin Guiriba, Juliet Cellar, Miriam Salaban and Danilo Janao. We were in very high spirits and looked forward to a pressure-less, paid, weekend excursion! A perfect diversion in an exclusive beach at that. Wow!

We left at 9:30 AM and the mini bus cruised the south highway until we stopped by in Carcar town to take a leak, stretch our legs or buy their famous chicharon. From there, we went on our journey and saw the very inviting seas off Sayaw in Barili. It was a very “high” high tide. I'm very very sure the sea in Barili is contiguous with that of Badian. I am most certain of that; and it was very clear.

We finally arrived at our destination at thirty past twelve and we were met by our gracious hosts - the couple Sir Jojo Alquizola and Ma'am Nannette Librando-Alquizola – and they were waiting for us, along with a lechon, a stew of freshly-caught clam and a special hog's blood thick soup of a concoction that is so different from others I've tasted before. The eating was inspired on an empty stomach and in an open atmosphere where sun, sea, sand and sky met. You wouldn't have wished a place and time as good as this. Oh, blessed me...

At two in the afternoon, we started right away our team build-up (or team building). I kept looking over my shoulder trying to calculate the water level if it has abated or not while in the midst of a puzzle to make the best possible package to prevent an egg be broken when dropped from a height of twenty feet! I proposed an idea and Eddie, Al and Liza did the rest copping us the prize of the only team that never laid waste an egg. The ever gracious Ma'am Nannette rewarded us each with 500 bucks each. May the good Lord bless her!

After these cross-hairs, we were like wild horses let loosed from our pens as one after the other, dived into the reassuring coolness of the sea. For two or more hours we swam and dove and frolicked carefree aided by endless rounds of Gran Matador Brandy laced with Cobra Energy Drink that we brought over which heated up our bodies and raised our adrenaline to levels where we have never been gone to before inside of a beach resort. We were red-faced, yes, but the drunken and uncivilized behavior are not there.

We were boys again, in that lazy afternoon, joined, now and then, by Sir Jojo swimming in his private seafront. A place where, a month ago, was just a vague idea, an unthought of suggestion, a wishful thinking of sort. The girls, after a few hours in the saline liquid, decided to transfer their frolicking in the fresh-water swimming pool just above the tidal line. Eddie and I would take turns in rotating the glass from Omar to Noel to Patrick and us. The bottle would either float or stay in the breakwater.

It was almost sundown when we emerged from the sea and, finding that the sea level have gone down, we prepared ourselves for supper. Sir Wilson Ong arrived just in time for the meal. Yes, a good dinner where (once again I led the prayers) lechon paksiw, sinugba'ng bariles and a soup of anduhaw fish with Valencia rice, plain rice or fine-grounded corn. After the feast, a board meeting, of a small scale, ensued. That was the most serious part of that weekend. Then the dance of the glass began again...

Patrick, with his trademarked boisterous laugh, echoed in the night while Omar, without a beat, gyrated and danced to an imagined tune. Noel, the most legal minded member of the party, dissected the pros and cons of a case while Al, the silent one, just grunted and nodded. Me, of course, held the glass and cast judgment on whom to have that opportunity to down the sacred liquid.

As the night progressed on, it was time to make a beeline to our sleeping quarters. The gentry passed the night in the main beach house; the girls in the guest house; Omar, Patrick, Al, Noel, Eddie and Joseph remained cowboys to the bone (or maybe just plain drunk) and slept exposed to the elements; while I, a true-blue mountaineer, snored comfortably inside my Coleman tent in a sleeping bag.

I awoke to a perfect morning on June 13 and boiled for myself water on my new Bulin portable stove to savor tea. I tested and became familiar with the stove right there and then. Elsewhere on the beach, I found Patrick's and Noel's place vacant. They left at dawn as what they have planned in the wee hours of the night. Sound, or voices, travel fast in the night, you know. Then, before breakfast, a slight rain showered over the place. The whole area is deserted.

After the shower, the place became a hub of activity again. Tellie cooked her prepared breakfast menu and the others helped her. There was a low tide and we looked for a calendar. Then, it was time for breakfast. Leftover lechon paksiw were served as well as pasta, lumpia and fried fish and rice and ground corn. I, again, blessed the food. Hmm, it was much silent this time. We missed Patrick today!

While waiting for the tide to rise (which never came), I rushed to the sea and swam its shallow deep with a diving mask. I enjoyed the school of fishes below and the seaweeds and the life among and between the islands of solitary rock. Then I found a remnant of sir Jojo's artificial reef wrought of used tires. Submarine life teemed among that remaining refuge. It was a great discovery...until it was time to go!

By now, residents of Gentle Breeze Subdivision began to trickle in at eleven in the morning and we gave way to their presence. Joseph conked to life the mini bus and we left the private resort and followed Ma'am Nannette's SUV. It led us to her ancestral home in the heart of Badian and we stayed awhile and took lunch there.

Courses of shrimp tempura, calamares, boneless bangus, rice, squid in black soup and the famous native chicken of Dumanjug were offered on the dining table and I let myself do as I pleased and I find it hard to stand erect over my seat afterwards. And so were the others. Then native chicken gizzards and liver and those aromatic spices were added to the served menu and I couldn't say no to them and I bloated out of proportions that noon!

We left Badian, at last, but Joseph made a sudden U-turn for another of Ma'am Nannette's ancestral home and we savored ice cream in two different flavors! This is a dessert, I think. Believe me, it could have been a great feast when I was a great glutton twenty years ago, but, this time, I raised a white flag and filled my glass in a whimper – just two servings! Not full. We call this in vernacular – hamabaw. My wife would have raised an eyebrow if she sees me in this unfamiliar situation!

Finally, finally, we left at two in the afternoon for Cebu. I took Patrick's place in the front seat beside Joseph. I felt drowsy but I fought it. The passing scene's too good to be missed and I glanced over my shoulder and I saw almost everyone doing a shuteye. By habit, I liked to have an open eye during my travels.

Reaching Naga, I saw a great dark bulge in the sky beyond and lightning flashed in the distance. It was an awful lot of lightning! At the South Road Properties were we passed by, the lightning or them thunder bolts grew in resonance and intensity! My gosh, with that condition, there'll gonna be a great flood in Metro Cebu! I couldn't see the outlines of the Babag Moutain Range either.

We reached in the vicinity of what used to be Kawit Island, the sky burst forth. Great traffic ensued at Plaza Independencia. We took a special detour at McArthur Boulevard, then a left turn to V. Sotto Street and I dropped off at the corner of G.L. Lavilles Street and walked the few hundred meters to my home.

I reached home drenched with rain. I tossed my chicharrones to my boys and it gave warmth to my home seeing them laughing and engage in long conversations. My ever-loving wife tossed me a towel and I finished my weekend in the bathroom. A nice and unforgettable weekend indeed.

Document done in OpenOffice 2.1 Writer.

FREEDOM TRAIL

IT HAD BEEN RAINING when I took a standing breakfast in the early morning of June 7, 2009 at an eatery in Katipunan Street, Tisa, Cebu City. Boy Toledo and Ernie Salomon were with me and they did likewise. At the end of this day, we will be completing the last leg of this “freedom trail” which will be used during the First Philippine Freedom Climb on Philippine Independence Day on June 12.

This is the trail that Boy T and Ernie, together with the group from Kompas Lakaw, are trying to establish starting from Katipunan Street in Tisa to Napo in Sapangdaku on May 30 and June 6. The same trail which ended abruptly at the Baksan Road that this same group followed towards the Sapangdaku spillway; still a far-off distance from Napo over a concrete-and-asphalt road which would take away the spirit of an already fatigued hiker to assault the steep Ernie's Trail to Mt. Babag.

For the Kompas Lakaw people, the newly-discovered trail from Tisa to Baksan meant a piece of the bragging right to claim a niche in the local mountaineering community. For Boy T and Ernie, it meant defeat; especially Boy T, who lamented to me at his home in Lapulapu City in the night of June 6, that they could have explored further the terrain beyond Baksan had some Kompas Lakaw guys been pliant enough to walk the extra mile with them.

Boy T never gave up and convinced me to join him explore further this “lost” trail. He never liked the idea of walking on roads and would rather be inconvenienced walking on trails. I always advocated hiking on pure mountain trails instead of walking on hilly roads and I understood fully well his point. I have confidence on his (and Ernie's) stamina and I believe that both can tackle the long and winding trails of about twenty kilometers distant from Tisa to Mt. Babag. What I am worried of are those that will be coming with them.

At 7:00 AM, under a cold shower of a monsoon rain, we three walked the main street of Riva Ridge Subdivision until we reached the foothills of Tisa Hills, where the rain stopped, assuring us of an all cloudy day. The trail passed nearby Villa Amores and Tisa South Hills Subdivision. The Spanish Riviera-like location of houses of the latter are nicer to behold when seen from a near distance but is in sharp contrast to an adjacent colony of temporary settlers living in their little decrepit huts. The poverty gap is so conspicuous here.

These gentle slopes where short grasses abound offered a good view of the Basak-Pardo-Bulacao corridor. The trail snaked around farms hacked out of hard limestone rocks. Farms whose thin soil ably supported the plants that grew on them. Most of these plants are stunted and bear fruits that are of lesser size than the average produce.

After an hour of steady uphill hike, we crossed over to the Banawa Hills and passed by an electric power pylon and we rested below a lone a coconut tree. From this vantage, we could clearly see from below us the Gochan Hills, the Tanchan Celestial Gardens and the South IT Park in Banawa. This stretch could have been glaring hot at eight in the morning but the early morning rains left a cloudy sky that cooperated well with our trek.

A few houses are located here and what human activity found are confined just to a minimum. Walking further on, we passed by some telltale signs of charcoal-making holes hidden amongst corn and cassava plantations. Passing by the last house, I saw two little girls climbing an arateles tree and enjoying the sweet little round fruits. Here, I left three used text books to the delight of the children.

The route then passed by along a trail planted with gmelina trees. Local inhabitants living in these hills sourced their wood for charcoal here and they only cut at the branches well above the trunks unlike those that I have seen in Sapangdaku and Kalunasan where the charcoal gatherers there wantonly cut the trees at the base of their trunks leaving no chance for the trees to regrow!

Looming across us is the construction site of the Monterazzas de Cebu. Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! Development in the hills should be controlled reasonably and not dictated by greed. It left great ugly gashes upon the hillsides of Banawa Hills and caused mudflow in large volumes down the the foothills that inconvenienced people living near gullies and along dry riverbeds. This “development” is uncomfortably close to the forest reserves of the Buhisan-Toong-Baksan watershed site – a protected area.

From gmelina trees we went into a great forest cradled between the Banawa and Baksan hills and by the Babag Mountain Range. This is second-growth forest; a reforested area. This is my first time to pass by this corridor of well-hidden timberland. The trail is perfect as it is very shaded and it followed the gentle contours of the slopes and ridges. Birds abound in this area. I even saw one wild rooster who flew from one tree branch to another tree branch.

Some stretch of the trail are very treacherous with slippery or loose soil and quite narrow in some parts. Along this newly-found trail are a number of rattan palms growing and claiming its former habitat and many times I would get snagged by its thorny vines. Few people pass by these wooded trail yet some recent human activity left some tree branches and trunks being cut and collected for firewood.

The trail went on its winding route until it reached a place marked by three big boulders marking the convergence of three trails. One trail heading towards Baksan; another trail, I presumed, going to the Buhisan-Toong area; and the other one lead deep into the forest, probably to Pamutan, I think. We followed the northeast trail for Baksan and it led us to solitary mango trees growing along the route until we reached an upland neighborhood in Sitio Calumboyan.

Here and there were playing children and we passed by crumbled old buildings at the back of the Baksan Elementary School and by an open deep well which is a source of potable water for the community. Finally, we three reached the Baksan Road. One part goes downhill to the Sapangdaku spillway; the other part goes up for Pamutan. This is the road that gnawed away the previous group's creativity and endurance. I will not let down Boy T today. I will lead and I will find a way.

I followed the dirt road uphill as my trained eye were now focused for some gaps in the forest that might tell of a trail. Walking on for about a hundred meters, more or less, I saw one such gap, barely discernible even to me. It looked like one of those several dried-out water routes along the road that I passed by but this one is flat and not steep. I decided to investigate and followed this wild trail and it was criss-crossed by naked tree roots whose soil cover were carried by recent run-offs. A recently-felled tree blocked the way, but my persistence took me on the other side and – voila – a trail is officially discovered.

Looking yonder, I could see Mt. Babag and I believed we have found the “lost” trail after squeezing ourselves amongst the thick and leafy branches and twigs of that fallen tree that blocked our path. I took the lead, then Ernie and Boy T followed after me and, after an hour or so of following the serpentine trail, we came upon a tamarind tree. I remembered these tamarind trees were used by the “old ones” in marking the trail in and around the Sapangdaku and Kalunasan areas. Then I saw more of these tamarind trees and I felt sure and safe that these trail will lead me, Boy T and Ernie to Napo.

We went over a long ridge and I saw below us the concrete road of Sapangdaku winding and bending along the route of the Guadalupe-Sapangdaku River like a ribbon. Now, we have found this “lost” trail that Boy T have been yearning to find on two separate occasions and it is not lost anymore and I officially gave it a name – the Freedom Trail – which elicited approving nods from both Boy T and Ernie.

By the way, this newly-discovered trail is a part of the long trail which I am planning to plot and trailblaze, starting from the foothills near the Guadalupe church up to Napo, to skirt away from the concrete-and-asphalt road. My work is half-done and I now just have to worry with the other unexplored half. Anyway, we passed by more of these tamarind trees and came upon a youngster making charcoal. We almost missed the main trail here when we followed the youngster's footprints into a cul-de-sac. We backtracked and found the true trail passing amongst little corn farm plots.

From these wee plantations, we went down and down and came upon a father with his two small daughters resting in a hut. We also rested here and conversed with the man and he directed us to the correct trail for Napo. Thanking him for that needed info I unloaded two used textbooks for his two daughters. They were all smiles as they opened page after page. We bade goodbye to them and went to some more downhill routes and came upon a branch of the Sapangdaku River.

We followed the creek down river until it reached the main waterway and we came upon a group of young boys hunting and fishing catfish and fresh-water crabs. They were armed with rubber-slings with thin little spears and nets and I could see they were enjoying their fishing well with a number of fishes and crabs already tucked inside their little buckets. We followed their direction until we reached Napo and we took our lunch there at thirty past noon.

By 1:30 PM, we were fording the river and we traveled the Napo Main Trail towards another river crossing were we took a brief rest. We took a shortcut bypassing Sitio Busan into Manwel Roble's place where we stayed for just a while upon noticing that nobody's around. Just the same, I left a pack of five wafers for Manwel, Juliet and Jucel.

We left at three and retraced our path back to Napo. From Napo we walked the hard concrete road for Guadalupe and arrived there at 4:15 PM. We celebrated our success in completing the Freedom Trail with a toast of glasses of ice-cold beer at our favorite watering hall in Guadalupe. Through Boy T's persistence and Ernie's insistence, it had shaped the route into a first-class route worthy of a major climb.

Document done in OpenOffice 2.1 Writer.

GHOST WANTED - A CAMPFIRE CREATIVE: Two Tales for November 1

HAVE YOU WALKED alone on a dark woody place under a full moon on a Good Friday dawn?

I have and it was quite unpleasant.

I was assigned then as an anti-illegal drugs operative in 1998 at Police Station 7 of the Cebu City Police Department and I was on a surveillance mission prior to a raid. It was 2:00 AM.

I went inside St. Jude Acres Subdivision in Bulacao then to Santa Filomena Village. From St. Filomena Village I traversed through a short-cut for Inayawan Elementary School. There were a few houses I passed by and, although there was a full moon, the path that I traveled on is very dark. Just wisps of moonlight penetrated through the tree foliage.

Just imagine someone is walking along with you and so invisible from your eyes. You meet a pack of dogs, maybe fifteen or sixteen in number. You thought, by their sheer number, they will bark and snarl and intimidate you. Then, all of a sudden, the dogs started to howl at the same time.

It was so eerie and my hair stood up. I didn't know that I have an invisible companion that only the dogs could sense.

<<>>--oo--o0o--oo--<<>>

On another time in 1997, I was with three other people walking in a pathway above a water dam in Awayan, Carcar. The path was lighted and up ahead it was dark. It was 2:00 AM.

The area was deserted. Then the dogs began to howl in the distance. While we were beginning to walk on top of the dam we saw on the other end of the dam a teen-aged male and female. Both of them wearing something white, walking hand-in-hand towards us. They just appeared all of a sudden.

It looked like they were not walking at all. They seemed to be floating or gliding towards us. A lady companion suddenly grasped my arm so hard, burying her fingernails in my skin and she was shaking. She noticed something that I didn't saw.

I felt for my gun handle and it was so reassuring. As they were nearing I greeted them a good morning. The two passed by us and disappeared in the dark. My lady companion's face was ashen white and she was crying from sheer fright. So do the other two who were with me.

They asked me if I have seen their faces. I said no. “Of course not, they don't have faces. They are ghosts.” They chorused in their reply. That made my hair stand up when I heard their answer. But, too late.

They told me that they could not breathe and say a word when the ghosts were in our front about to pass by and my timely greeting to the ghosts broke the ice and so they left us alone.