A long weekend trip to Bacolod and Iloilo

It was one long weekend we had over the week and so I joined my brother Arch. Bing Avila’s Sportscar Club on a road trip to Bacolod City. Leaving Cebu City at dawn on Saturday morning for a 50-kilometer trip to Toledo City. Then we took the Fast Cat Roll-on, Roll-off to cross the Tañon Strait to San Carlos City. Then from there, we drove along the 82-kilometer short cut to Bacolod City via the town of Salvador Benedicto.

Since I took my drone with me, I took the opportunity to fly the drone to the scenic Malatan-og Falls, which you can view from the main road halfway to Bacolod City. Finally, I had great photographs of the waterfalls from above and very close to it… call it a dream come true. Mind you, it was raining as we started to climb the mountain road, but the sun showed up just in time for me to take my drone photographs. This was my first long weekend road trip since my kidney transplant a year and a half ago.

When you go on a road trip to Bacolod City, it is at the same time a food trip. We ended up not having lunch in Aboy’s, my favorite restaurant in Bacolod, but in Diotay Eatery, which was nearly half the price of Aboy’s and the fish was super fresh. Since our group was planning to cross to Iloilo City on Sunday, we took the anticipated mass at the Carmelite Church, where we got an unexpected blessing when relics of St. Faustina, the Apostle of the Divine Mercy and St. John Paul II who canonized St. Faustina and became a Saint himself were prepared by the priests and the acolytes so the faithful would kiss the relics.

Dinner was at Aida’s Eatery inside Manokan sa Bacolod just across the SM Mall. The place was crawling with customers and it was uncomfortably warm inside… but with food as good as this, we could endure the discomfort. If there is anything going between Cebu and Bacolod, it is that the roads in Bacolod are very wide and cemented, while the roads in Cebu are too narrow and potholed. However this is the first time I saw many roads in Bacolod City being “reblocked” by the DPWH. I have always believed that when DPWH runs out of infrastructure projects they fix those unbroken roads and fix them again. This is a sickening practice by DPWH officials in connivance with their favored contractors.

Then on Sunday we went on a day trip to Iloilo City, leaving our cars in the Port of Bacolod for the hour-long Ocean Jet ferry. One thing that Bacolod Port officials have to do is fix their Passenger Terminal, which are so 1970s! The air-conditioning is not working and it was full of passengers. What are they waiting for? A visit by Pres. Rodrigo Duterte? If he sees the sad state of the Bacolod Port, the President might blow his top!

Arriving in Iloilo City was quite refreshing. The last time I was in Iloilo City, I took a plane that landed at the old Mandurriao Airport. We hired a Toyota Coaster and drove to San Joaquin to the Garin Farms. However the 52-km distance took us nearly two-hours to travel because of the same reblocking problem that DPWH was doing on their roads. It turned out that the Garin Farms is owned by the family of the husband of former Rep. and former Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Janette Garin.

We passed by her house/mansion in Guimbal, a couple of towns before reaching the Garin Farms. But since we had little time, I used my drone to survey the farm and took video and still shots of the place which was indeed a beautiful place with a huge cross perched up the high mountain worthy of the two-hour drive from Iloilo City.

We got back to Iloilo City and were met by our old friend, Department of Transportation (DOT) Regional Director for Region-8 Ritchie Osmeña who brought us to Tatoy’s Manokan and Seafoods. Ritchie used to be a Cebu City councilor. His appointment to Iloilo City is without doubt a loss for Cebu! Since it was a Sunday and therefore no work, he toured us see the development of Iloilo City. For me who’ve not been back in Iloilo for at least 10 years, it was a great development that I saw with my own eyes.

Apparently, Iloilo City officials learned from what we did in Cebu City after we closed the old Lahug Airport and what used to be the runway of the old Mandurriao. Today it looks very much like the Bonifacio Global City… with only the control tower that was kept standing to remind people of what the placed used to be. We Cebuanos destroyed the old Lahug Control Tower… even the huge cross where St. Pope John Paul II said mass at the old Lahug Airport grounds was dismantled!

We also saw a glimpse of the first full scale P2.2-billion mall of Megaworld Corp. But above all, Iloilo officials prepared the city with wide roads and a beautiful River Boardwalk. Meanwhile, our local officials in Cebu are quarreling with each other at a time when the President was giving Cebu infrastructure projects, which the previous Aquino regime failed to deliver.

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