In Transit

Want to go slow to Caraga? Think again!

The slow road to Caraga. If you want that, ride on a provincial jeepney. What usually takes 3 hours by van or four by bus can be an exasperating 6 hours by jeep. If you are short on patience, then forget about it. There are just too many stops, too many waits, too many bad roads coupled with a heavy downpour.

After leaving the jeep terminal, you would think that you are already on your way. But it detours to the market where it will stay for an hour to wait and haul the produce that a passenger will be buying. Then a trip to the gasoline station where several containers numbering around 10 will be filled with fuel for a good 30 minutes. Then off you go to another waiting area, another 1 hour before finally, you are on the highway up north.

However, after a few kilometers, a passenger alights. Then another few kilometers and a passenger rides. Produce has to be delivered and loaded. The vehicle breaks down and then repaired. Then at a terminal in one of the municipalities, the jeep stops for merienda until there just comes a point wherein you’re silently cursing on why, in the first place you rode this jeepney. But all you can do is sit it out, bear it and make the most of it.

Now, will you still opt to go slow to Caraga? Think again!

The lonely road to Gov. Generoso

On an ordinary day, the highway leading to the municipality of Gov. Generoso in the middle of the western side of the long and narrow peninsula of Davao Oriental is lonely. Except perhaps for the occasional bus or private vehicle traveling to Mati, the province’s capital or to Tagum in Davao del Norte. Sometimes, a habalhabal, a motorized public transport, passes filled with passengers. And on other times, local people going about their way walking on foot along the roadsides.

Fishermen going about their business casting their nets or cruising at sea provides a welcome respite to the roadside scenery monotony. Just a few minutes after the sun has set behind Samal Is. and stopping at an elevated area with a clearing overlooking the sea, you can find folks wading in the still and shallow waters. At the background, the lofty mountains of Compostela Valley loom.

Gov. Generoso is a small sleepy town. Lazy afternoons are spent at the coast. Atop docked boats, these two women are busy preening.

Agora bus terminal, CDO

I really don’t know why the Agora bus terminal in the city of Cagayan de Oro always fascinates me. Its a modest strip of land just beside the Agora market in the often chaotic part that is just near the pier.

It is bisected by a short two lane road where the buses come and go. On each side is the covered bus bays, housing eateries, turo turo style, side by side with regular pasalubong stalls and a few ticket booths. In between these stalls are dilapidated red plastic seats on an iron frame with some of these seats already missing. Here passengers and sometimes their luggage takes up the available space.

Mayon up above

What a sight to behold: the sun waking from its slumber but still hidden by low lying clouds as mist hasn’t yet lifted across the land that is Bicol. A familiar orange hue envelops the still halfshut break of morn as the plane hovered thousands of feet above.

A striking silhouette with a trace of smoke billowing from its tip, rising from the land, perfect, majestic Mt. Mayon.

Chaotic bus terminal in CDO

The jeepney from Ketkai pulled to a stop as I signaled the driver to when I reached Agora, more specifically known as the old bus terminal just beside the market in the fast growing city of Cagayan de Oro in the northern-central part of Mindanao.

Yellow buses of Bachelor Lines located at the left side lined the first few rows. Some are airconditioned, comfy and spankingly new while some are just plain ordinary, waiting for passengers to ferry to the distant northeast that is Butuan and Surigao along the winding coastal roads.

A few more rows ahead, the red buses of Rural Bus occupied the rest of the slots, waiting for people bound to the southern and central part of this huge island tracing the ridges and spines of the cordilleras.

Bus terminals. How I delight in entering one. Looking through each and every vehicle’s wooden or plastic karatula (signboards) for my specific destination and choosing what to take depending on the level of comfort or availability of the bus that I have to ride.