Gridcrosser

The dining area at Jotay Resort afforded a view of the sea, calm and shimmering like shattered glass in the white heat of a clear morning. Then far on the north, near Palaui Island, something disturbed the water, breaking the floating sheets of light: a group of dolphins or small whales. The people having a breakfast of crabs stirred excitedly, straining their necks and squinting their eyes. Somebody looked for a binocular. Sighting of a group of whales during this time is very unusual, said Ed, one of our guides. They may be lost, someone commented. Whales and dolphins are usually seen from December to March around the waters of Santa Ana. The town is now promoting this attraction as a tourist draw.    

As the play of fins and tails went further up the horizon and disappeared, we began to see the hazy silhouette of Camiguin Island, and behind it fainter suggestions of islands. It looked so near, I said. But it will take about six hours by boat from here, said the petite and mocha-complexioned Gloria, who worked at Santa Ana’s tourism office. It is six hours across the sometime treacherous Babuyan Channel on the slender, small, blue-painted boats with outriggers but no roof, moored on the beachfront of Jotay. Aww!

I’ll take you, Camiguin, next time, I sighed. Santa Ana itself requires ample patience to get to, and there was much to Santa Ana with its quietness and nervous energy, which is maybe an aching for something to happen or maybe some form of happening beneath its surface; its lighthouse on Palaui Island; its several coves and beaches along the shore; and the Viray Festival.

Santa Ana in the province of Cagayan is perhaps the northernmost town in the Luzon main island, about 632 kilometers from the country’s capital, Manila. By land, it takes all of butt-aching 14 hours to get there. We set off by six in the evening and by two in the morning we were along Dalton Pass in Nueva Vizcaya. There was still the vast province of Isabela to tackle and the road was fortunately good. By dawn we were zipping through the towns of Cagayan—Penablanca, Iguig, Alcala, Gattaran, Lallo, Camalaniugan, Santa Teresita—passing some handsome brick churches.

The road seemed to go on forever even when we were in Gonzaga, Santa Ana’s adjacent town from which it separated to become an independent town in 1949. The town is heralded by an arch of the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority. In 1995, the government created the Cagayan Special Economic Zone and Freeport, which will be developed into a self-sustaining industrial and tourism center in the north, and the area included the entire Santa Ana.

Passing by a yard of used cars, the highway snaked through hills, vast tract of land and scattered houses. We were going to the town proper, but first-timers can actually missed it. Zipping along the highway, it was hard to make out a semblance of a traditional town. Maybe a fire station, almost like a shack with a sign, a Philippine flag and a couple of small fire trucks, may serve as clue. But one can go on and on and hit the sea, missing the town proper altogether. Perhaps I was not used to vastness.
Jutting out of northeastern Luzon almost into to the Pacific Ocean, Santa Ana occupies an area of 44,130 hectares with the timber-rich tail end of the Sierra Mountain range rising in the inner portion like a backbone. The 23,436 population is scattered in 16 barangays. Most of the people are concentrated at the town proper, Centro, at the northwestern coast.

Centro at a glance looked like a long strip of road. The municipal hall was partly hidden by trees of the plaza. Northward, the small marketplace was near the Palawig Bridge. Across was the terminal of rusty buses going to Laoag City, capital of Ilocos Norte, 297 kilometers to the southwest. It is quiet in most part of the year but in the last days of May, there was activity.

Usually empty, the sprawling lot between the highway and the shore, near the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority building, became the festival ground. The morning we arrived, street dancing, one of the highlights of the Second Viray Festival, was being held. Groups, usually students and from nearby towns, spread out on the ground and performed with their colorful costumes under the sweltering sun. It was unusually hot in Cagayan.   

At one corner of the ground, children dressed in squid and crab costumes, others in warrior garbs with their faces painted, waited for their turn. Some spectators took refuge under the shadow of a big replica of native sailboat, the main festival symbol, by the main road. The road was now fringed with stalls selling toys, clothes and kitchen utensils. Like circus performers and fair setters, most of these vendors make the rounds of town fiestas and events in the region to set up stalls. Taking cue from the event, one enterprising vendor painted images of sailboats and wrote the event and the date on small plates and mugs to sell as souvenirs. 

Taking shelter under the erratic shadows of an itinerant vendor’s cluster of balloons shaped like Japanese anime robots and silver dolphins were small-framed and dark-skinned Agtas, waiting to give a contribution to the program. They were shepherded by American linguistics student Carol Robertson, who came all the way here to live with the Agtas and study and document their language and lives. 

The Agtas are the original inhabitants of the area. Now, they are scattered in the town’s upland barangays and forests. Some families live in Palaui Island, just off the coast. The town is now mostly made up of Ilocanos with a sprinkling of people from other ethnic groups. The history of the Santa Ana is actually about the settling of the Ilocanos in the area, coming in big boats called viray. The festival is a celebration of those momentous events, when the virays came and the town began to form. It also celebrated the importance of the viray, which was the only means of transportation in the area in the early 20th century, to the early settlers.

A wooden flat boat propelled by sails, the viray measured eighteen meters long, five meters wide and three and a half meters tall. They principally used by merchants doing trade in northern Luzon.

It is told that by 1900 timber trader Don Vicente Asticarraga with his family and a group woodcutters arrived in a viray from Aparri, a town 78 kilometers to the west of Santa Ana, and began clearing the land and established settlements. Don Vicente put up a hacienda at the northeastern tip of the area, now the barangay of San Vicente, named in his honor. Others followed. From 1919 to 1935, several groups from the Ilocos region arrived in virays. These early settlers relied on the virays as their connection to other parts of the region, enabling movement and trade. 

The town still sees the trickling in of people from other parts of the country, attracted by the timber of the area. During the later part of the 20th century, Bicolanos and Visayans came during the timber boom and principally because of the rich fishing grounds, then the Tagalogs, mostly from the provinces of Aurora and Quezon, during the rattan and hardwood boom. These people now became part of the ethnic mix of the town. 

When we were campaigning, recalled Pinky Rodriguez, wife of present mayor Norberto Victor Rodriguez and herself from Manila, we would go around to meet people. They would speak them in Tagalog but they would answer in Ilocano. Then after a short walk, we would speak to those we’ve met in Ilocano, but they answered in Tagalog. It could be a bit confusing. 

During the eighties and early nineties, the timber traffic in Santa Ana was on the roll, despite law against it. The rumble of trucks carrying lumber trailed in the highway going out of Santa Ana in the dead of every night, passing lax checkpoints.

There was big money in the timber trade and those involved could squander their instant riches as lustfully as they had acquired them.

Santa Ana was largely unknown except in the cluster of girlie bars around the Welcome Rotonda marker in Quezon City, where workers arrived like high-rollers and splurged after earning big from the timber sales.

Although not totally stamped out, the timber heyday has passed in Santa Ana. Now, Mayor Rodriguez and his wife Pinky wanted to make Santa Ana known as a tourist destination and rouse the sleepy town into activity with endeavors like the Viray Festival.

Celebrated from May 26 to May 31, when the sea is at its calmest, the Viray Festival precedes the town fiesta on June 13, in honor of its patron, Saint Anthony of Padua. The festival featured the usual fares of street dancing, fair and social events. This year’s celebration however was highlighted by a world record bid of mounting the longest grill. 

“Wala lang. Kaatribidahan ko lang ‘yan,” blurted Pinky when asked how did she come out with such an idea. We laughed. It was just a whimsical suggestion that popped out of her head but her mayor husband and the town officials considered it seriously.

Atribida means villain. The word seeped into common usage to mean, among other things, butting in a meeting or conversation when one is supposed to have no big role in it. But the mayora (colloquial term for the mayor’s wife and not for a woman mayor) has playing been a substantial role in Santa Ana.

“She is actually the mayor,” Mayor Rodriguez, an unassuming man who is an accountant by education, teased. “I am just her assistant.”

Although heavily pregnant, Pinky was running the show for the past few days. And almost every night, she was holding dinners for us. She prepared a lobster dinner for us as welcome, launching a lobster feast the whole duration of our stay. I hadn’t had this much lobster before.

Having the longest coastline in the whole of Cagayan, Santa Ana logically has rich sea harvest including lobster. Most the catch though are sent to Manila for sale. 

The lobster and the blue marlin, another known Santa Ana produce, were considered as symbols around which a festival would revolve when the idea started percolating in Pinky’s head.
We were thinking of something to symbolize our town and for the festival, and we thought of lobsters and blue marlins, She related, but other places have lobsters and blue marlins.

Then someone suggested the viray, and after learning about its significance, they deemed it very apt and meaningful.

As a way of launching and promoting the Viray Festival, Pinky spearheaded the participation of a Christmas-landmark building contest sponsored by the company Unilever in 2004. Requiring community effort, the piece must be built in the town center as the town’s prominent Christmas display. Using a hundred mayonnaise bottle caps, Pinky and her team crafted a sculpture with the viray as centerpiece and had it displayed and lit at the town center. Pinky related how the old folks were tearful when they saw the installation. The place was never decorated during Christmastime before. Not much had been happening really, they said.

But the Philippine Game Fishing Foundation holds headquarters here in San Vicente for more than two decades now, and they hold annual national and international game fishing tournaments. Sports fishermen gather in Santa Ana to ply the waters looking for majestic sailfishes, marlins and dorados. Because of this, Santa Ana likes to be called “The Sailfish Capital” and the “Game Fishing Mecca” of the country. 

But the event is upscale, thus having an air of exclusivity.

The Viray Festival is a more welcoming affair. Now with the longest grill bid, the event had become a more community-effort thing as well as an enticing attraction for visitors.
World record bids are becoming popular activities in some Philippine festivals. In the grilling/barbecue department, there are two Philippine attempts already. In 2003, Dagupan, Pangasinan, a kilometer of grill to cook milkfish was set up during its Bangus Festival. That record was broken by Alcala, Cagayan, with three kilometers of grill in 2005. Now, Santa Ana would try to surpass that with a four-kilometer grill set up along the highway from Diora-Zinungan Bridge in the south to Palawig Bridge in the north. They had ordered close to four tons of flying fish (locally called burador), which was cheap and abundant during this season, to grill for the big occasion.

And what was the motivation for this?

“Prestige,” Pinky said matter-of-factly.

“Kaatribidahan ko lang talaga,” she repeated. We laughed.

Amusingly, whimsical things can be a big event or be taken seriously in sleepy and generally uneventful Santa Ana. The name of the town itself seemed to be born of whimsy. 

Santa Ana is not actually named after the saint. The town was a barangay of Gonzaga called Palawig, meaning the mouth of the river. In 1919, Federico Navarro from Narvacan, Ilocos Sur, arrived to establish a homestead. His group spearheaded the move to separate Palawig from Gonzaga. This campaign was shelved when Navarro was made mayor of Gonzaga in 1941. But in 1947, after World War II, he continued the effort, now as a provincial board member. Helping him was another provincial board member, Roberto Avena, and then Cagayan governor, Nicasio Arranz. In 21 October 1949, then Philippine president Elpidio Quirino signed an executive order separating the area into an independent town. After some boundary conflict with Gonzaga, it was inaugurated in 6 March 1950. Palawig was renamed with the acronym of the names of the three men, adding the word Santa because Ana did not sound sufficient.

I prefer the name Palawig anytime. Not only is it native, it sounds exotic and untamed, thus connoting adventure, just like Palawan, Boracay and Batanes to which they sometimes like to compare some places in Santa Ana. 

Santa Ana has identified some areas that can be tapped as tourist destinations. First is the white-sand beach of Anguib, farther north in San Vicente.

It took us an hour and half to get to Anguib. We hired boats on the shore in front of Jotay to the sitio of Anguib, passing through the San Vicente Strait between Palaui Island and the San Vicente Port. There were a few islets strewn along the way. Manidad Island is just a big rock jutting out of the sea, encrusted with auburn sands. During sunrise, the island transforms, its silhouette like the head of a giant crocodile rising up from the waves. Thus, it is colloquially called Crocodile Island.

After passing the estuary where the Palawig River spills into the sea, we passed by forested shores against the backdrop of the misty Lacaylacay Mountains. After the coast of Santa Cruz and Tangatan, San Vicente was heralded by the port where two Taiwanese fishing vessels were fastened by large metal chains, caught poaching on Philippine waters. Here, the Philippine Navy keeps a base and a refueling station. On the navy base grounds were the headquarters of the game fishing foundation and the getaway house of Vic Vic Villacencio, prominent Manila restaurateur who is the head of the game fishing foundation and promulgator of game fishing in the area and in the country.

There were a few butter-colored coves tucked in the jagged coast of San Vicente. It seemed Anguib has the longest shore among them. The waves quieted down as we approached the cove of Anguib. Seaweeds abound in the area and two men were harvesting some. The 1.8-kilometer ivory shore was practically deserted. A couple of small huts were set up for visitors.

Here the waters of the Pacific Ocean come in before coursing through the Babuyan Channel, lapping at the shore with their ribbons of dead seaweeds. At the other side were sparse forests. A barbed wire fence almost ran through the length of the shore. Beachfront lots were declared private properties. The peace belied the disputes surrounding another Santa Ana prime and controversial commodity: land.

While some things are fought over, there are few that lay neglected like the Cape Engaño Lighthouse.

From the same take-off point, we embarked for Palaui Island, a hulking piece of wooded land buttressed by dark rocks just off Santa Ana. In an hour, we were bobbing along its rocky western side. The island is 3,850 hectares, with a length of ten kilometers and width of four and a half kilometers. After 30 minutes, we skirted a bluff to its northern side where a series of capes splayed out to the sea like the arms of a starfish. It was spectacular, the rows of capes tasseled with mist slowly dissipating as the sun rose. At each end the sea sent a white sprays.

At last, we berthed on the cove of Engaño. The water was clear as daylight and the shore a generous spread of broken, sun-bleached corals. They gave off a low crunching sound when I walked punctuated by hints of a tinkling sound. On the eastern side was the cape. Something gray was peeking among the greens, the top of the old lighthouse.

An old man sat at a weather-beaten shed. A fisherman? The caretaker perhaps? He had a paltok, a crafty contraption for catching crabs. It was a piece of bamboo open at one side. When a cranny-loving crab entered, it would trigger the trap door to shut. Around the shed, feral chickens foraged among the scrubs.   

At the end of the shore near the cove, the forest revealed a pathway, a bower. We took our breakfast, sitting on roots of trees. This clearing in the forest looked like a cavern with an opening at the other end. The floor was carpeted with a patchwork of dried leaves. As we emerged at the other end, the landscape opened with a rolling meadow. Batanes landscape, they said. The Sound of Music landscape, others commented. We twirled like Julie Andrews.

This was where the trek to the lighthouse began. Some 200 concrete steps were built to the lighthouse, fringed with tall grass and wild flowers. Midway, we were afforded a panoramic view of the cove, the neighboring promontory and the sea, impossibly wide and impossibly blue.

At the top, the ruins of the Cape Engaño Lighthouse, said to be built in 1892, sat like a lonely sentinel. The rusty gates opened into a compound. The kitchen was at the one side and the powerhouse on the other. In the middle was the octagonal tower with a mosaic-like design. The tower rose to 47 feet on this 92-meter elevation. People likened it to the Cape Bojeador Lighthouse in Ilocos Norte. 

Attached to the tower was the keepers’ quarters with the roof blown off. Among the solemn gray walls, the building opened to the clear blue sky above and the windows showed the romantic images of shores and islands. At one side, the cape jutted half a mile seaward. At another, the Dos Hermanas, two islets, were anchored fast to their places for what seemed like eternity at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Time stood still. Dos Hermanas. Two sisters. Folks tell they once bid their husbands goodbye and wait their return since time immemorial. Romance still bloomed in this forlorn part of the world.

Remoteness and romance did not save the lighthouse from being vandalized. Some things were taken. The marker was gone. The rest was left to the elements. Patters of running children perhaps echoed through this building. Laughter bounced against the walls. Seven keepers and their families have lived here once. We found one at the barangay of Santa Cruz.

At 80 years old, Teresa Jamorabon remembered her lighthouse years, mostly good memories, in alternately hazy and lucid telling. She now lived with her grown up children and their spouses and her grandchildren in the family compound. We tried to piece her episodic recollections.

She said she was born in Pasig then came under the care of a Spaniard named Jose Gambe. Under what circumstances remained a mystery to us. She came to live in Cape Bojeador when his surrogate father became the lighthouse keeper there. Then Gambe was transferred to Cape Engaño.

“Gubat dati ang Santa Ana (Santa Ana was a jungle),” she remembered. “Mahirap ang buhay sa dulo ng daigdig (Life is hard at the edge of the world).”

Teresa married Gregorio Jamorabon, the second keeper of Cape Engaño. Starting in 1946, the couple with their nine children lived in the lighthouse with six other families. She kept in her possession old photographs of the families in the lighthouse. One picture had them posing by the porch, the bronze marker showing by the front door.

Life was relatively easier here. They received regular rations of food. Most of their needs were supplied by the government. Rain collected in a cistern beside the building where they drew their water. On the side they raised goats. Some brought in carabaos. Their descendants survive, she said. They roam the island feral. Simaron they are called.

They frolicked by the shore and caught shrimp in the stream.

“Maraming Agta sa Palaui dati (There were many Agtas in Palaui),” she said.

By October 1968, her husband retired, and they came to live in the mainland. On October 20, 1985, Gregorio died. Their eldest son Roberto had a short stint as keeper until he became mentally ill. Teresa had not stepped foot on Palaui Island since.

Over the years, the lighthouse went into slow disrepair. There was once rumor of treasure buried in Cape Engano, she said. People came to dig for it. They also went away with usable pieces of the lighthouse when they did not find any treasure.

In 1989, there was a strong typhoon that flooded Santa Ana. It also blew the roof off the building next to the tower.

Aside from the photographs, she has for a treasure a hefty bronze bust of a lion that once decorated the sides of the tower. On the day they left the lighthouse, she brought it along as souvenir.

There were eight, she said. We saw none when we visited the place. She got one. Don’t tell anyone, she said. People might mistake it for the treasure. But it was indeed a little treasure, heavy with history.

Meanwhile, the people of Santa Ana were trying making one, lined along the highway and ready to be fired. The longest grill bid was on the roll. Three-hundred-forty-one pieces of galvanized iron sheets molded into grills lined the four-kilometer stretch of highway. They were loaded with 270 sacks of charcoal. Using 282 liters of kerosene, they were kindled. Three and half tons of flying fish began roasting.

It seemed most of the townspeople were there on the highway, fanning the flames. There were about 4,000 participants and spectators, they said. By the festival ground, mayora Pinky was busy with her grill, wearing an outrageously wide-brimmed hat. The street was on smoke until it dissipated by lunchtime. The people feasted on flying fish. Whether they have broken the record or not, it was still not known. There would be a long deliberation. But they had fun and they attempted something and something big happened in their town at the edge of the world, which was a very important thing.

We embarked for home by seven in the evening. Passing by Centro, the place looked abandoned like a ghost town, save for a kid hurrying home on his bike. The night cloaked the Lacaylacay Mountains and the sea did not make a sound. But beneath the dark were beautiful places, stories and controversies, and a nervous energy, which was maybe from both the aching and glee for all the happenings.

Getting There
There are several buses in Manila that go to Tuguegarao, Cagayan; Laoag City, Ilocos Norte; Aparri, Cagayan; and Gonzaga, Cagayan. Buses to Santa Ana are available from these points. Tuguegarao is 165 kms from Santa Ana; Laoag City, 297 kms; Aparri, 78 kms; and Gonzaga, 33 kms. Travel time from Manila to Santa Ana takes about 14 hours.
Bus lines that go to Tuguegarao include Autobus (02-735-8096), Baliwag Transit (02-912-3361), Deltra Bus Co. (02-732-7849), EMC Bus Line (02-781-3450, Sampaloc terminal), Florida Bus Line (02-781-3450) and Victory Liner (02-920-7396, Kamias terminal).
Two plane companies fly to Tuguegarao on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. They are Air Philippines (855-9000) and Asian Spirit (851-8888).

Getting Around
The chief transportations around Santa Ana are tricycles and motorelas.

Where to Stay
There are several small resorts and lodging houses in Santa Ana. These are Jotay Resort and Hotel (with mobile phone number 0916-2239477), M & E Lodging House (0916-2239859); Saint Anthony Lodging House (0917-6419069); El Cortez Beach Resort and Hotel (0927-6136296); Tres Rosas Beach Resort and Hotel (0916-5361514), Eden’s Lodging House (0927-5047608) and CEZA Guest House (with telephone number 078-858-1021).
We stayed in the three-year-old Jotay Resort, owned and operated by Josephine Taylor, a Santa Ana native married a British. It is said this is the best resort in the town.

Contact Information
For more information on Santa Ana, contact the local government through mobile phone number 0906-2747526, 0915-5346544 or 0919-4291027. One may also contact the Department of Tourism regional office in Tuguegarao City through telephone numbers (078) 844-1621 and 846-2425. Its office address is Rizal Street, Tuguegarao City. 

The parade had started when we arrived in Baliuag, one of the northwestern towns of Bulacan 52 kilometers north of Manila. We stopped at a street leading to the church and watched the parade, a modest one involving town and barangay officials and little girls dolled up, waving like beauty queens. The day was thankfully not scorching although the sky wore a gunmetal color. On the radio, announcers reported how the storm Caloy was raging through the Visayas and southern Luzon. Onlookers came in trickles. This was only the second year of the Buntal Hat Festival, celebrated on May 13, and the event seemed to need more time and effort to gain popularity. But the buntal hat, a sort of cultural icon for which the town is famous, is a well-known item, now being exported to countries like Australia and the United States. Hand-woven from fine fibers extracted from the buli palm, the buntal hat has found few patrons in the country, regarded no doubt as a piece of nostalgia and provincial fashion.

There was much more activity within and around the old church of Baliuag, dedicated to its patron saint, St. Augustine. The plaza across, called the Glorietta, held a trade fair aside from the numerous vendors milling around the church, selling suman and sweets, newspapers, rubber slippers, toys and spoons and forks in a cart, glinting in the sun.

First built between 1769 and 1774 in the baroque style, the Baliuag Church seemed larger than the church of Plaridel, Baliuag’s mother town. An amusing story was told about why the church was built and how the town came to be known as Baliuag.

When Baliuag was still a cabecceria or barangay of Plaridel (then known as Quingua), people of Baliuag would go to church in Plaridel, a walk and a boat ride of some nine kilometers. The churchgoers from Baliuag often arrived late for the mass. Before long, they became the butt of jokes, with some remarking, “Heto na ang maliliwag (Here come the slow ones),” when they arrived. Even the priest would refer to them as “maliwag.” After some time, the Baliuag people requested a church built in their place, and their petition was granted. But the name stuck, and their place came to be known as Baliuag.

The Baliuag Church is the most prominent structure in the town center, a hulking affair of stone and brick with a canopy at the entrance. It recently underwent a series of renovations. A large relief of Moses holding the tablets with the Ten Commandments was placed at the right side. Inside, the ceiling was skillfully painted with clouds and the azure of sky, giving a momentary illusion of roofless-ness. Even the convent beside the church, which was built following the design of the houses at that time, was renovated.

The church museum, Museo ng San Agustin, is actually a room near the lecture and function rooms and priests’ quarters. Old church records are stored there — a 1733 registry of baptism as the oldest book. One can also find a 1734 registry of confirmation and a 1733 wedding registry, next to cabinets holding old chalices, censers and stoles.

The 1845 capa magna or grand cape, the original cape embroidered with silver threads plated in gold for the image of the town’s patron saint, is displayed. In a glass encasement, the image of the Our Lady of the Holy Rosary is the most valuable item in the museum. Dressed in glimmering raiment and about three foot tall, the statue of unknown age has head and hands made of ivory.

Baliuag has its own town museum, though, and a more accesible one. A short walk from the church, along Gonzales Street, across the Iglesia ni Kristo church, the museum is formerly the municipal hall. Before that it was the house of the Gonzales family, a prominent socio-political family in Baliuag (from which Bro. Andrew Gonzales of the De La Salle University came). The house was turned into a municipal hall at the turn of the 20th century. In 1970, the municipal hall built a new structure and moved to its present location, leaving a few offices. In 1998, most of the house was transformed into a museum.

The town’s culture vulture Alberto de Leon, medical doctor at the University of Santo Tomas, spearheaded the filling of the museum, lending many pieces of furniture and antiques. He also displayed his paintings here, mostly acrylic flowers on buri mats, a hobby of his. The museum showcases bedroom arrangements, dining arrangements with table setting, and living room set up to approximate the olden days. Most of the furniture are with woven rattan parts (called solihiya) and bone inlays, one of Baliuag’s esteemed products.

In the barangay of Santo Cristo, bone inlaid furniture is still being made. One knows one is in Santo Cristo when one notices newly varnished chairs and tables being left to dry in the front yards of many households. On 714 Cunanan Street, one can find the pioneering furniture maker, the Reyes family. Twenty-six-year-old Rochelle Reyes was tending the store, Marinelia’s Furniture, while workers were embedding wedges of carabao bones into a jewelry box. In existence for more than 20 years, Marinelia’s Furniture was started by her father, an off-shoot of the pioneering Soledad’s Furniture, named after her grandmother, Soledad Reyes.

Joel Pascual, former church administrator now with the local tourism office, disclosed that the Reyeses started it all until furniture making spread to other families within the barangay. “Puro gawaan dati dito,” he said, “kumalat mula sa lahi nila.”

Employing about 20 workers usually with four bone-inlayers, Marinelia’s Furniture now produces furniture of sleek modern design and has branched out into interior design, spearheaded by Rochelle. Traditional furniture with bone inlays and solihiya though remains a mainstay. Carabao bones are used in diamond-shaped cuts and strips, making vine and flower designs on wood, usually Philippine mahogany and marine plywood. Using a chisel and a hammer, a worker carved out a penciled design and hammered in the bone pieces.

This is less time-consuming than making buntal hat, Rochelle’s brother jested.

Indeed, there is much effort involved in making buntal hat, though it earns less.

One is not likely to find buntal hats in the local market; one has to go the municipal office, where the two-year-old Baliuag Multi-purpose Cooperative temporarily holds office, to order buntal hats. Fifty-year-old Rosario Bautista is the president of the cooperative and the buntal hat weaving’s prime mover. Learning to weave at eight years old and starting her own business in 1982, Bautista claimed to come from a line of weavers including pioneers Dolores Maniquis and Joaquin Villones.

It is said that the hat weaving industry started in the pre-war years. Since then, the buntal fibers, the uway of the buli palm, came from the Quezon towns of Sariaya and Tayabas.

Like many folk crafts in the country, buntal hat weaving is experiencing a decline and likely even a slow death. Weavers are usually old women like 65-year-old Epifania Mariano, who learned the craft from her mother. It would take her about two days to finish a hat. Usual hat designs are the fedora and the cowboy hats. She said many weavers are concentrated in the barangays of Makinabang and Santa Barbara. Buntal hat weaving though is not limited to these areas or to the town. Nearby towns of Bulacan and even of Pampanga, which form the northern border of Baliuag, have weavers. Bautista said she has about 500 weavers from Baliuag and from other towns.

Bautista would supply all the materials for the weavers and pay them P150 per finished hat. Usually, she has a capital of about P250 for each hat, which she sells for about P300 to P500. Buntal hats are not cheap, which could be why there was a dearth of buntal hats during the festival parade.

The Buntal Hat Festival is the brainchild of Mayor Romeo Estrella to promote the buntal hat in particular and Baliuag industries in general. Aside from that, he is also responsible for putting up the cooperative. He dreams that one day the buntal hat will gain esteem and of putting up a one-stop shop of Baliuag products along the national highway. Definitely, it will be more colorful, substantial and interesting than a parade.

The Bulacan provincial government offers the Experience Bulacan tours touching on the historical/cultural, the ecological, the educational, the industrial/agricultural and the culinary. One can get in touch with the provincial tourism office located at the Hiyas ng Bulacan Convention Center in Malolos City through telephone number (044) 791-7335, telefax number (044) 662-7635, or e-mail bulacan_tourism@yahoo.com. Log on to website www.bulacan.gov.ph.

(Published in The Daily Tribune, 05/21/2006)

Got a tooth extracted yesterday. Gawd, it hurt!  Suffered inflammation for weeks I had to do  something. Got this idea of experiencing public  hospital. So Thursday afternoon, the dentist was  out. Mike said let’s go to the Philippine General  Hospital. How? Emergency. Do they have a dentist  there? They have. I think it is the only emergency  room which has a dentist. Wow. Okay, maybe,  maybe. Okay let’s go. So, Thursday night we went  to the emergency room of PGH. It reeked of a  putrid smell. There was dried blood on the seat.  We were tense. Asked to fill up something and had  a blue card. Waited for the dentist who was  making rounds. When they came, they checked my  tooth, prescribed antibiotic and asked to be back  tomorrow. At 6 AM. Shit, 6 AM. And bring the blue  card. To OPD. What’s OPD? Orthodontics plus  Dentistry? With the other cheek swelling, went  home, popped a capsule, and waited for 6 AM.   OPD is out-patient department. God, there was so  many people. The blue card means you’re on  charity. Oh okay. Lined up twice. Gaw, it was hot,  crowded and dizzying. Misery seemed to pervade  the air. Waited and waited for turn. 8 AM. 10 PM.  11 PM. Popped another capsule. 12 noon. Should  I get lunch? Naaah I might get called and I am not  around. Gawd, it was hot. Gawd, this looked like a  crowded bus terminal except there were many sick  people. 2:30 PM. Gawd, my turn. Wanna back out.  Actually wanna back out since 9 AM. But I was  there na, so okay, go through with it. Many cuties  in dentistry department. There were about 12  cubicles inside each with dentist chair. Doctors are  okay, nice. Got my tooth extracted. Doc explained  things thoroughly, which was very okay.  Gawd, it  hurt. Bed rest, doc said. No activities. Gawd, I had  a Pinatubo trek the following day. Went straight to  work after that. Chuck off Pinatubo trip. Gum  getting better. Felt the loss of a teeth. Dazed from  it all. Root canal for life.