The tongue of road jutting out into the sea in Cordova is a must visit place for a stunning view of Cebu City.

To any visitor either of the two bridges connecting the small and flat Mactan Is. with the main island of Cebu, provides a breathtaking look of the metropolis from an elevated position and thus a bird’s eye view of this booming and beautiful city in the south. The structures might not be as extensive and as tall as in Metro Manila, but this province can well hold its own.

All Soul’s Day is anticipated on 1 November. While many already visit their dead during the day, it is during the night that this traditional event gets spectacular as the light of a thousand candles and bulbs make cemeteries luminous and dazzling. Add the multitude of people and it becomes a truly memorable event.

While some are making last minute travel back to their home province (or probably vacationing at the beach), the first day of November sees cemeteries across the country already abuzz with visitors. In Cebu City, the Calamba Cemetery is one of the biggest in the province and also an opportunity to soak in this time honored tradition.

Honoring one’s dead is an age old tradition among Asians. In the Philippines, it is the deep reverence and respect for ancestors that define one of Catholicism’s celebrations, All Souls’ Day marked every 2 November. Like Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) sans the pageantry, it’s a very festive occassion. Flower markets are also very active as people descend to buy bundles of blooms to be offered to their departed.

Cebu doesn’t have the impressive colonial era cemeteries of Iloilo. There’s no ornate polygonal cemetery chapels like that of San Joaquin, Cabatuan and Janiuay. However, it does have its own camposantos that would also delight lovers of these heritage structures.

I’ve been thinking about doing this series for quite a time and so, with the end of the Cuyo Loop and as a fitting segue from my short sojourn in Masbate, I might as well feature my home province as seen from the perspective of a native son. Ahem. That might be a tall order but I’ll try. I promise, no dried fish market in Taboan. No guitars. No mangoes. No Malapascua and other known beaches that have been hogging other blogs and websites. And most of all, no cliched Taoist Temple hackneyed to death with images.

For the past few days, it has been raining in Manila due to typhoon Helen hovering above Batanes with torrential rains dampening one’s dispostion but this didn’t stop me from going home to Cebu. Well, I had to attend to some urgent matters even if this trip was unplanned. Luckily, I was able to get a roundtrip ticket a week before and guess what, it is Philippine Airlines which was offering their Buy One – Take One promo.

After three weeks vacation at my home province in Cebu, I was again on the road for the trip back to Makati. I’ve been looking forward to make this trip not only because I will finally be able to visit the provinces beyond Iloilo as well as pass by Mindoro but also to come back, albeit briefly, San Carlos City in Negros.

A modified version of a shot I did during a trip in Cordova, Cebu. Beautiful.

After graduating in college, I went back to Cebu and found work in a telecoms company. The beauty of it? It again afforded me to travel to places that I haven’t gone to or even imagined of going to!

As I was a field engineer, my area was Central and Eastern Visayas but was later on expanded to cover the whole of Visayas and Mindanao

I really don’t have much recollection of the travels outside of Cebu that I had during my childhood up until the end of my high school years except for a hazy recollection of accompanying my parents in Manila when I was still little and a vacation in Camiguin island off north Mindanao during high school. This was with the aspirants in the school’s seminary. Still there seems to be another vague memory of going to Ozamiz, to my father’s relatives.