Foot and Fire

Karsts and Pine trees define the short trek in Bucari, Leon, Iloilo. Cool breeze, verdant mountains, breathtaking views are only a few finer things nature can give us in that part of Panay Island.⛰🌏 The karsts above and rocks below pepper the mountain of Mt. Mansiga. 🌲⛰ Reaching the heart-stopping heights of Mt. Mansiga is all worth it. The bird's eye view of the mountains and routes, the clean air deeply processed by the lungs, the cool greeneries of the forest trees, the happy sturdy trunks of pine trees are all worth the effort of going up. Going down is easy so I can guarantee that you can go home. 🤣 View this post on Instagram Nan, selfie pa more. #bucari #bucarileon #leoniloilo #pinetrees #karst #limestone #naturetrip #naturetrekking #trekking A post shared by Gerlie Uy (@sassy_gerlie) on Feb 5, 2020 at 4:27am PST Pine trees are forev...

I was happy that I was able to spend time with the Panay Bukidnon in 2015. One of the good things I miss there is the Saturday school of children being taught chanting. Panay Bukidnon is known for their oral tradition and the Sugidanon or epic, among others. See of my blog posts on the Epic that was published by UP Press.  Funded by NCCA as I learned later, Teacher Romulo “Amang Baoy” Caballero taught the children chanting and it was fun listening to them. Aside from the chnating of the epic, I heard them sang a folk song on domestic life that's both funny and tragic. I wished I can go back and enjoyed more.

Charmed by nature and lulled by the cool wind of Damires Hills Tierra Verde in Janiuay, Iloilo last December, I returned there to celebrate my mother bear's birthday. There, we had a family room perched on top of a hill and we enjoyed double beds for each one of four of us. The veranda has a duyan and the cool breeze invited us to enjoy it. The occupant in the next hut painted the villa and my nephew enjoyed watching him doing it when he caught him at sunset and then saw him again the next day in the morning on our way to the canopy walk. ***     We did the mini forest hike after passing by the kahon of ricefields and we paused for photos at the start of the hanging bridge. I was the last one as I intend to take many selfies and I don't want movements from the bridge made by my naughty nephew. *** Here is a photo of me at the start of the walk through the bridge. *** Of course, night swimming is a must. The picturesque restaurant and the well-lit pool are q...

  After doing the trek on the campsite and the deck where the Pine Trees of Bucari abound, we went to see the falls. We did not expect to pass by many makeshift four bridges before reaching the Combong Falls and Imoy Falls plus the farthest Nabuduwan Falls. The falls are part of the tourism offering of Bucari aside from the campsite and the viewing deck. The location of the falls is about two kilometers before reaching the campsite. The roads widening and construction is underway last October 2018 when we got there and must be ready by next year. At any rate, it was fun to have my friends car pass by a small creek like those in the movies and adverts before reaching the barangay hall where we registered our names and proceeded to trek going to the falls accompanied by a guide.  Bridge 1. This is the first bridge we just pass by. It is headed to a different direction and used by the residents to go to their farms and do their trades on the other side. Offi...

  I have a tip to myself: I'll go camping next time. It would be a wonderful treat to one's stressed out brain to sleep under the tall pine trees of Bucari, located in the mountainous terrain of Leon, Iloilo. Pine trees abound in the camping site and you would wonder how old they were and whether they were planted intentionally to make a pine tree playground. Well, when I go back, I know what to do. I'll go camping or if I'm in a company of scared bunch, there are cabins for rent in the camping ground. For food, we can buy fresh vegetables displayed nearby from lettuce, cucumber, sweetpeas, cabbage, rootcrops and cook them in the camping ground, or simply buy from the turo turo available around.   From the camping grounds where taking in fresh air was a wonderful exercise, our bunch decided to go up the Mansiga viewdeck which has 772 steps and made into a way of the cross. We made our inhale exhale every three stations. It was tiresome but a rewarding ve...

At the house. One day, Bulawanon engaged the help of Tikum Kadlum, a hunting dog with the gift of sensing the spirits, in cooking rice for his husband Paiburong and his brother Dumaraog who will be going hunting. When the rice was cooked, the brothers ate fast. Then, while Bulawanon packed the betel nut for her husband, Paiburong and Dumaraog dressed themselves, with Dumaraog suggesting they match their sashes and belts, since he is his brother's loyal protector. To complete their hunting preparations, the two brought out their long-bladed sharp knives, shields, spears, and lances from their gold chest and wall hanger. When everything is set, Paiburong bade goodbye to his wife, Bulawanon, who reminded her husband to be careful as he might meet in the forest one named Makabagting, who is accompanied by a man-eating woman called Muwa. Makabagting is a nobleman and a warrior who is widely known as having tasted human flesh. Paiburong went out of his house, and he heard a sound. It...

Tikum Kadlum is the first epic out of ten epics of Panay as told by the Panay Bukidnon of Calinog, Iloilo. This is my first read. There are ten (10) books all in all which are all interrelated. I believe each epic can be told independently of the others but the whole story can be appreciated if read according to the sequence of the series. Like when I finished Tikum Kadlum, another character Amburukay is introduced and thus, the book two is titled in her name. The book is presented as a transcription of the chants as told/sang by GAMABA Federico Caballero and his sister Teresita Caballero-Castor in archaic Kinaray-a. In a table form, the archaic kinaray-a is then translated to contemporary kinaray-a, then Filipino, then English. The single best accomplishment of this book is that it is a published documentation of the chant in archaic language. I am not sure if it can hold the interest of those who reads in Filipino or English because as for me, I appreciated the reading...

The Molo Church and the Molo Plaza need no further introduction as this is one of every visitor's favorite churches in Iloilo City. If one happens to be in Molo, one cannot stop by without gazing up to the cathedral's facade and without taking a photo of it. Same is true with the gazebo found in the Molo plaza. So here, I am sharing to you the church and the plaza in Molo, Iloilo City. *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Belarussian journalist and writer Svetlana Alexievich's body of work consists of nonfiction but she specifically got this year's Nobel Prize for her book, Voices from Chernobyl. Originally written in Russian which follows her country's oral tradition, the book gave voices to the victims of the largest technical disaster of the twentieth century. I was able to read a short but already riveting portion of the book in Paris Review, and I quote here the portion which I believe can represent the pain of 2.1 million people: I was twenty-three. Two months later I went back to Moscow. From the train station straight to the cemetery. To him! And at the cemetery I started going into labor. Just as I started talking to him—they called the ambulance. It was two weeks before I was due. They showed her to me—a girl. “Natashenka,” I called out. “Your father named you Natashenka.” She looked healthy. Arms, legs. But she had cirrhosis of the liver. Her liver had twenty-eight ...

Submersion of Panay Bukidnons: A Call for Salvage Aside from the imminent fact that the Jalaur River Dam shall submerge portions of their ancestral domain, the Panay Bukidnon's cultural heritage also faces submersion Sunburn, scratches from blades of grasses, and scars from insect bites are among the souvenirs I and a friend got from our three-day immersion with the Panay Bukidnons of Brgy. Garangan, Calinog, Iloilo. We slept and lived with them in order to hear stories about stars and gather recipes of their traditional cooking but we ended up hearing more pressing matters, about the dam project and the struggle to keep the heritage vis-a-vis the daily needs for survival. On our second morning, we traversed the mountainside planted among others with coffee and cacao trees owned by our host family, with the end of reaching Jalaur River where a megadam project is to be implemented. Along the way, we traversed at least ten live streams including Karangayan and Bukay Ng...

We ended our day tour at the old Spanish house located at the end of the island of Gigantes Norte. It was a sight during sunset given the ambient light given off by the sun and the rustic paint and structure of the old house. It withstood the test of time because it is made of cement mixed with shells found in the locality and eggs, just like how old Catholic churches were made then. *** I mentioned we enjoyed the ambient light of the sunset..  Here are what we took during our brief visit: *** The lighthouse is a recent one and it is said to be Japanese-funded. *** ***  And Kodjack, our tour-guide and water-fetcher, becomes an instant photographer... Just check this out: *** *** Ah, the view.... *** *** And please don't forget to buy trinkets for souvenirs from these lads: *** *** Check out how Gigantes got its name here.. And my other blog posts on Gigantes here. .. Don't forget ...