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The road is bad but a cheerful Jollibee announces
that Catbalogan isn’t far away. From the vhire terminal to the
hotel, one rides the padyak, the local pedicab and a mode of
transportation that produces neither air nor noise pollution. There
are motorized tricycles but the padyak dominates the streets. At the
hotel there is no snack available—the cook doesn’t report on a
Sunday. The lady receptionist tells me this with an expression in
her face that she must be talking to someone from another planet.
Well, the view from the hotel to the nearby mountains is
spectacular. It feels great to be away from the concrete jungle. My
companion takes me to Ernie’s Pizza, where I have an excellent
baked macaroni. Despite the many Jollibee billboards along the road
leading to Catbalogan from both south and north, the Jollibee store
is still under construction.
Not being able to get early
breakfast on a Monday morning is one experience I haven’t had in
any other place. Breakfast at the hotel, which was actually included
in the room rate, was available only at 9 o’clock because the cook
observes regular office hours. I toured the town for 45 minutes
looking for another place where I could take my breakfast, but had
to leave for San Jorge at 8 a.m. on an empty stomach. Catbalogan, by
the way, held a referendum about the proposed cityhood the day
before I arrived. It was an overwhelming yes for cityhood.
Western Samar has potential as a
tourist destination. Big rivers traverse the land, and the view to
the sea and various islands is truly beautiful, starting with the
San Juanico Bridge connecting Leyte and Samar. But where do people
stop and take pictures? Where can visitors spend the night or rent a
small boat to take a boat ride in the river? Coming from Tacloban,
the road—the Maharlika Highway—is good until the town of
Calbiga. Then it becomes bad and it makes travel time unnecessarily
long and tiresome. Scattered repair work has started on some
portions of the road.
Places such as Calbiga,
Catbalogan and San Jorge might seem like the end of the world to
some urban dwellers, but the fact is that they are located along a
highway that connects Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. Tons of goods are
transported from region to region via this highway. Not
surprisingly, the same pirated DVDs with 12 to16 movies in one and
sold at P60 to P80 per DVD that are available in Metro Cebu are on
display on the sidewalks of Calbayog City. These DVDs are said to be
mass produced in Malaysia and smuggled into the Philippines.
This is the road to Matuguinao,
my host told me as we crossed a bridge. The “road” was the
river. It takes four to five hours by pump boat to reach Matuguinao
from Gandara. In 1991 funds were made available to construct a
“high-priority rural road” on this stretch. Twenty kilometers of
mostly gravel road with five bridges would cut the travel time to
maybe about 30 minutes. However, the contract was terminated due to
a 58-percent slippage at the time when the project was supposed to
have been completed. Two detour bridges were constructed later, but
due to substandard quality, neither of the two is passable today.
The “high-priority road” is no more, and travelers take the
long trip on the river. Matuguinao remains the poorest town in
Eastern Visayas with a poverty incidence of 72 percent.
The small coastal town of
Tarangnan is luckier than Matuguinao. Despite the town’s distance
from the highway, a cemented road has been constructed linking the
town to the highway. However, the cemented road is a narrow one-lane
road, where the one lane alternately is the left lane or the right.
Why they didn’t construct one straight lane is a mystery.
Samar isn’t a desolate place.
It might still have an insurgency problem but it doesn’t seem
overwhelming. Private citizens are active in issues such as good
government, environmental protection and reproductive health. The
local governments are getting their share of the internal revenue
allotment. The congressmen have their priority development funds.
Samar might have more than its share of storms and unpredictable
weather conditions, but to a visitor it is a place worth returning
to.
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