When living in the states, whether I was walking,
bicycling, motorcycling, or just plain traveling in general, there was always
something new and unique about each day.
Perhaps it was because I was in a different location every morning, or
maybe it was the constantly changing weather which greeted me with the rising
sun. Whereas at my new home on the
tropical island of Negros, the weather rarely changed. I would like to estimate that ninety percent
of the days here started with heat and humidity, and then the sun showed up
from behind the mountain peaks to add a little more misery to the mixture. Even during the wet season, the sun would
boil the land until around noon, then the resulting warm rain would cool it
down just a bit…making the conditions almost tolerable, but not quite. Of course, there are some of you who are
wondering why I would trade the variety of four seasons for a sweltering
greenhouse? For me, it is a simple fact
that I am truly living in a paradise. OK, maybe it is not the tropical aisle
such as you would have seen in the movies, South Pacific or Donovan’s Reef or
even Six Days and Seven Nights, but it is a thin slice of the World of
which
you do not see in movies. It is the
beauty of the people, the uncomplicated lifestyle, the endless beaches and also
the towering mountains all with just a turn of the head. The land is teeming with life, both two and
four legged as well as those undesirable creatures which exhibit six or more
legs. Still, it is a place that I have
come to accept and relish. Besides, it
doesn’t snow here, nor does the humid heat aggravate my knees as the cold of
Iowa does. I want to stress that this
land is not for everyone. However, it has
worked out quite well for me and in the end that is all that matters.
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| Diana Baguio at the bus stop ready for the day's walk |
As mentioned earlier, a morning on the island of
Negros didn’t change much from one day to another and that was how it was that
morning as Diana and I patiently waited for a bus to travel north once
more. The highway was deathly quiet with
the only difference between this and the other mornings being a male customer
was
actually sitting at the Angel’s Hamburger stand. Whether he was buying a hamburger or just
making time with the female employee I could not say, but there he was all the
same. At about the same time, a lone dog
sauntered across the highway moving from one rubber trash receptacle to
another, its emaciated frame revealing the meager pickings scrounged from
within.
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| A quiet highway in Himamaylan City, Negros Occidental |
With, almost,
clockwork efficiency, the Ceres Liner arrived at within a few minutes of the
previous mornings. Even though the
conductor was different each time, the number of passengers pretty much stayed
the same….not very many. Again, we
coursed our way up the highway through a sleeping community and quickly went
from lighted roadway to complete darkness.
I knew that you wanted to know this, but the distance from the first
road on the north edge of Himamaylan City to the fire station on the south edge
of the settlement is five kilometers (3+ miles). Considering there is only one parallel side
street in this town of 20,000+ inhabitants, it is a long way or short way if
you consider the number of people. I was, and still am amazed at the number of
towns residing along national highways that have no side streets at all, so if
there was an accident, well, you would have to wait until the wreckage was cleared
before anyone could proceed as there would be no side roads with which to
detour upon.
The one hour ride was quiet and uneventful. Diana fell asleep while I gazed out the
window at the passing lights of early risers within their bamboo dwellings.
Every so often I would even catch the glimpse of a small cook fire as the
transport rumbled by. The feel of the
cool, albeit very humid air flowing through the open window, mixed with the
aroma of early morning cook fires filled me with a soothing sensation as the
metal beast lumbered over the pavement.
The sky was already showing the light of a new day and
I surmised it
would just be a handful of minutes until a hot and unforgiving
sun was to climb above the distant mountain peaks as we alighted from our bus
outside the Bethel Baptist church on the north side of Valladolid. The walk today would encompass sixteen
kilometers (10 miles), and I was not all that excited with the prospect it
would all be under the cruel eye of old sol.
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| Valladolid, Negros Occidental - Sunrise colors to christen a new day |
The journey began by crossing a small bridge and then
following a seawall for a kilometer more.
However, just prior to the bridge, during the daylight hours, were fruit
stands with ripe mangos for sale arrayed upon their tiered tables every single day
of the year. Mangos are seasonal, so I was
not sure where they collected the ripe fruit during the rest of the year, still
they were always on display and flawless in appearance.
In the early dawn, a fisherman was out in the surf
tossing a round net by hand; a line was attached to his wrist as he slowly
gathered it
up with hope of capturing enough for a meal or even more of which
he could sell at the market. Meanwhile,
the many basic abodes across the highway were showing signs of life as
residents were about their morning meals or leaving for wherever they went at
the beginning of a work day.
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| Valladolid, Negros Occidental - predawn fisherman seining for his daily catch |
Around the curve was a straight away which would last
for six kilometers. During that segment,
the fields were filled with rice
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| Valladolid, Negros Occidental - Deteriorating Ceres Liner Bus stop |
while bamboo constructed stands, which had at
one time sold watermelon, now sat abandoned and neglected until the next season
returned. On the left was an old
restaurant, the concrete walls were still intact although the roofs had long
ago collapsed. Across the highway was an
old waiting shade with its concrete roof at a precarious angle. In the years since, the roof has never
changed and still maintains that tilted threatening slant.
The sun was well into the eastern sky as we passed
through Barangay Mabini and took our first break across from the Emilio
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| Valladolid, Negros Occidental - Kanlaon Volcano in the early morning light |
Infante
Elementary School at the waiting shade.
As we rested, a woman with small child came and sat beside us. Shortly after their arrival, a man came up
and handed her one thousand two hundred pesos.
Of course she was quite excited over that. The young mother had placed five pesos on
something called the Small Town Lottery and had won a portion of the
jackpot. Due to her exuberance, I was
guessing it was quite a sum of money for that family.
Despite a light morning breeze which was cooling us
nicely as we satwithin the comfort of that open air shelter, we both realized the
longer we rested, the higher the sun would rise into the sky, and the longer
that blazing sphere was present, the hotter the morning would surely be. Thus we departed our shaded oasis and moved
onward toward Bago City.
The volume of vehicular traffic had increased
substantially as we
departed the small barangay. Furthermore, to my displeasure, the sun’s
warmth had intensified during our brief stop at the waiting shade. As we methodically strode past rice fields, I
quickly understood my error in taking a break so soon and also realized, underneath
a blazing sun, that this could be a very long sixteen kilometers.
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| Valladolid, Negros Occidental - A nipa house within a sea of rice |
Between the Pulupandan intersection and the Bago River
bridge there was a group of businesses lining the east side of the highway
selling bamboo furniture. They had large
chairs with arms, couches, table and chair sets, and even beds made of wood on exhibit.
Of
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| Bago City, Negros Occidental - A jeepney load heading into Bago City |
course, there weren’t too many customers at 6:25 a.m. and I noticed that the
operators did not take the furniture inside either. That was the difference between the west side
of Negros Island compared to the rest of the Philippines in that you could
leave bulky merchandise outside at night and still find it there in the
morning. At this point we were walking
beneath shade trees on our side of the highway, but since there were none on
the opposite side, we continued to be bathed in sunlight and thus those trees
were nothing more than decorations in my mind.
 |
| Bago City, Negros Occidental - Loaded sand moving boats |
 |
| Bago River silently flowing toward Sulu Sea |
manually unloaded into
dump trucks or into sacks. Looking in
the direction of the Sulu Sea, the land bordering the waterway was covered with
tropical growth as the river curved toward the northwest and to its eventual estuary.
The road forked just after the bridge with one branch
coursing its
way into the city center, while the route Diana and I took skirted
more toward the east side of the community.
There we strolled past the Ramon Torres National High School, the Bago
City College as well as the Bago City Hospital.
We also passed a Lechon Manok (bar-b-que chicken) stand by the name of
“Hot Chicks” and took our second break not far beyond there.
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| Bago City, Negros Occidental - Hot Chicks Lechon Manok Stand |
Fortunately for me, there were quite a number of
waiting shades along most highways. Many
would be situated within a few hundred meters or less from each other. Basically wherever a road or even
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| Daryl Cleveland evading the inferno at a waiting shade |
trail might
venture off into the foliage and to some hidden cluster of nipas, you could bet
there would be a waiting shade nearby.
The unusual thing was I rarely saw them occupied. Don’t get me wrong, I did see people sitting
within them at times, but quite often they were vacant. Even when taking breaks during our daily
sojourns, most times we were the only visitors.
In a way, that was a good thing as I could spread out my large frame,
but it was also an unfortunate situation as we learned very little about the
area we were trekking through.
North of Bago City, the crop of choice had changed
from rice to sugar cane and, as one would expect, the day became ever hotter
with each succeeding kilometer. We were
now walking aside recently laid asphalt.
I hate asphalt. For a few years back in Iowa, my son Brad,
his classmate Tyler, and I would pedal bicycles from the Missouri River to our
town of Odebolt which encompassed sixty-five miles of rolling landscape. One year they paved a twenty mile segment
with fresh asphalt. Fresh Asphalt not
only absorbed the radiant heat of the sun quite easily, but it also put it back
out. For me, it was a ride through
hell. The combination of heat from the
sun compounded by the heat from the black pavement just about finished me. At that point, towns were located about every
five miles apart and I would take long breaks in the air conditioned
convenience stores and even soak my already sweat saturated t-shirt as well as
a towel I would wrap around my neck in cold water in an attempt to compensate
for the inferno which awaited me outside the doors. We even stopped at a Pizza Hut on the way
home and I consumed a pitcher of water by myself, but it didn’t make any
difference by then. The heat had done
its worst on me and, even though I did complete the ride; the last fourteen
miles were excruciatingly slow. I knew
that this final portion of the walk would entail at least five or six
kilometers. Fortunately for me, the sun
had not warmed up the asphalt enough to recreate the aforementioned
nightmare.
As before, there were no pedestrians along the roadway
this day. Yes, there were some students
heading toward morning classes, but as to people walking along the highway in
the country, going from one place to another, they were noticeably absent. It just seemed peculiar to me that a nation
so poor wouldn’t have more citizens walking, but what I did observe was that
most people were packed into and onto trikes.
Perhaps they had adopted the ways of Americans and had discovered that
walking was just a waste of valuable time.
Around a kilometer after departing Bago City, we came upon a
portion of
the original National Highway running under a myriad of shade trees on
the left side of the thoroughfare. The pavement was narrow, but in relatively good
condition due to its probable age. We
took a rest at a waiting shade nestled among the grove of trees and watched as
an elementary student played with his handmade truck. I have seen quite a few of those toys here in
the Philippines. It only takes some
scrap metal and discarded set of wheels to make a youngster happy. We sat
and watched as he would go to a sand pile, fill up the back of the truck and
then pull it down to a smaller pile where he deposited his load. A future truck driver in the making, I
thought.
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| Bago City, Negros Occidental - Young boy and his toy truck |
Returning to our mission, I could tell the sun was
beginning to have its deteriorating effect on me. Also, my knees, still recovering from a
debilitating bout of Dengue Fever a few months previous were beginning to
express their displeasure at my long distance walking. Alas, we took brief respites after each
kilometer (thank you waiting shades).
Outside the San Miguel brewery, we took a refreshing breather and sipped
on bottles of Coca Cola as our olfactories took in the yeasty aroma from the
plant a kilometer away.
It was truly a relief when we reached the day’s
destination a kilometer up the road. We
now had only thirteen kilometers left to complete our journey. It was in a nicely shaded spot with a wooden
bench outside a small factory upon which we sat and awaited a jeepney to take
us into Bacolod.
The jeepneys of today are not like those of past
decades. They are longer and more with
less interior space. My knees begged to
be
stretched out, but there were so many people crammed into the four wheeled
transport that I could only stick them out the back opening. Then when they stopped to wedge in another
passenger, I would have to fold up my already cramped legs to allow entry. Even
though the ride encompassed less than thirty minutes in length, it was quite
uncomfortable and by the time we exited the vehicle, I had to walk some more
just to allow my knees to settle down.
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| A critical stare from a jeepney passenger at the end of our walk |
We finished the morning with a trip to Jollibee’s (a
McDonald’s equivalent) and then watched the movie, Pacific Rim at Robinson Mall
of which I slept through about half of it.
We took a Ceres Liner home later that afternoon and arrived just before
sunset.
That day had been long. The kilometers had taken their toll on my
knees as the heat wore me down physically.
Yes, it was a great accomplishment to have completed that walk for the
day, but it also taught me about my “new” limitations. In a way, it was disenchanting when I
reflected that less than ten years earlier I was walking upwards of
twenty-three miles in one day and yet now was lucky to even accomplish ten
miles. Yet, it also reminded me that I
was no longer fifty years old. That we
were never going to be Olympians forever and furthermore, that our bodies did
not heal as quickly as they did decades earlier (i.e. Dengue Fever). Still, at the same time it was a
psychological victory for me. It proved
that limitations were no more than that and if one was resolute in their
convictions, even limitations could be overcome. Amazingly, I was coming of the opinion that
my limitations had been defeated when I had taken that first step toward
Bacolod sixty-seven kilometers ago.
Daryl A. Cleveland a.k.a. bounder
January 5, 2015
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