The day after the Sinadya sa Hilaran Festival in Roxas City, we went on a road trip towards the municipality of President Roxas. It presented me an opportunity to further explore the province of Capiz. My first trip to Roxas City happened only because I was heading for the Ati-Atihan in Kalibo. With the exemption of trying out diwal shells and chilling at Bay-bay beach, I wasn't able to go around the province. This time, with the company of fellow travel writers and the tourism officers of the city, we were able to cover a long stretch of highway kilometers and hillside terrain for some nature and food tripping.
Arriving at the sleepy town of President Roxas, we were greeted by its unassuming Vice Mayor, Mister Alfonso Golero. He welcomed us to his small but decent house and offered us ice cold buko juice, that proved to be very timely as I was already so thirsty. He told us about our destination, Liktinon Falls, how only a few visitors outside of town has been there before. I'm a huge hiking guy way back in college, however, up until now I'm always game for some uphill walk in search of waterfalls. I love swimming under the cold bristling and bustling waters. Such a high to feel the current coming from massive dome of the underneath of the Earth and its mountains.
The hike was brisk, nothing strenuous aside from negotiating massive rock boulders. The hiking party got separated at the middle part of the trail. I found myself together with Kara, Christian, Regine, Iggyboy and Claire we got lost for a few minutes. Nothing wasteful in matters of time as we had the whole afternoon, but the amount of energy we spent on a useless hike of half a kilometer (uphill) heading towards the wrong direction and back, took a large chunk of ourselves. It gassed us, travelers used to long walks in the flat asphalt roads of the cities, we had no match for the elevated slopes of the hillsides. Iggyboy momentarily lost his vision through dizziness, "a pitch-dark wall starts to cover up my vision" he told us, as he had to sit up and rest for a few minutes.
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| Photo by Regine Garcia of http://betweencoordinates.com |
By the time we reached the waterfalls, Estan was already taking photographs at the upper part of Liktinon falls. After resting for a few minutes, we took turns dipping into the cold water. I sat over one of the rocks and just laid down my legs and feet under the water for some spa-like therapy.
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| Photo by Kara Santos of http://www.traveling-up.com |
The best part came during lunch time as were served with Adobong Taklong, a local cuisine consisting of snails usually found in the waterfalls and riverbanks in the forest. It was a bit weird at first seeing an unfamiliar body of a creature I'm not used to digesting. I can still imagine it with it's shells, crawling around and not as meat puppets for an adobo dish. Once I slid one, two and then three and four...inside my mouth I started chewing it with familiarity. It is kind of chewy at first, like rubber but once you bit into it and tasted the adobo sauce it becomes like a smoother version of beef. I can say, it went straight down my throat and eating with my bare hands, the whole experience became a feast.
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| Photo by Regine Garcia of http://betweencoordinates.com |
We stayed there for a few hours and on our way back we lost Christian for a while. We were like all preparing to get inside the van and was like "where's Christian?". It turned out he suffered from cramps and rested briefly at one of the local's house. Earlier the day, en route to the municipality of President Roxas, we passed by the fish market beside Pontebedra River where we were shown samples of King/Mud Crabs by some vendors.
The whole riverside market is filled with people during "market days" which happens twice or thrice a week. We also tried suman sa ibos, which is made of "steamed glutinous rice" accodring to Kara's article. The province of Capiz is definitely a food haven. Seafoods and Kakainin abounds and each town seems to have their own must-try local cuisines.
After the long day of exploring, we retired for the night at Maribert Inland Resort located at Lantangan Pontevedra, Capiz. Where again, we were served with another feast of smoked bangus, nilaga and a few other dishes which later on became our pulutan over a round of Gold Eagler Beers.
We capped the night with an engaging conversation about horror stories and other tales on the road. The particular topic which stood out was Claire's "Hello Stranger" experiences. I'm sorry because I am not allowed to - in any way, or even write a hint about it or else I risk disappearing from the face of this planet.
It was yet another great experience of being on the road. Together with people whom I only interact online before, It's a welcome change to spend the day traveling with them and most of all, sharing a now-hard-to-find beer over scary and at times, controversial topics of conversation.
