29 – Mangoes and Mountain Biking

The Holy Week (Easter) break in the Philippines begins on Holy Thursday and finishes Easter Sunday. Rachael, Alison and I headed to the nearby island of Guimaras for a mountain biking / beach trip. Guimaras is a small island between Negros and Panay known for its mangoes. We had better luck with the ferry this time (no fires, just a bit of sea sickness)!

Guimaras is a fabulous island for mountain biking. Our guides from Panay Adventure Tours fitted us with decent bikes and took us off the beaten track through mango plantations and coconut palm groves, along mountain ridges and down to tiny fishing villages. We also visited one of the well known pilgrimage sites of the Philippines which was preparing for an influx of visitors on Good Friday. Hundreds walk up the mountain to see a re-enactment of Christ’s Crucifixion. Apparently they really do nail the actor/volunteer to the cross during the re-enactment.

It was incredibly hot on our ride but we had regular stops to eat the deliciously sweet mangoes or drink the refreshing juice straight from a coconut. We learned the proper way to eat a mango – hold the fat end, peel the skin off in a spiral direction then bite into it, and if you don’t have juice dripping off your elbows you’re not doing it right! J Guimaras is where most of the Philippines export mangoes are grown. Did I already say how delicious they are?

Our guides were possibly a bit too ambitious on our behalf though for our second day of riding. We began at 8am and were still several km’s from our destination when the sun went down. Without any bike lights or street lights we had to call for back up and get a truck to take us back to the resort! We were staying at Valle Verde Mountain Resort on the ridge. It had a great view, nice little nipa huts, and a lovely pool that was great after a whole day of riding.

We recommended the mountain biking to a couple of Aruna’s friends who were visiting from Australia and they headed there to do the same thing the following week. We felt pretty bad though when one of them had an accident on a steep down hill section ending up needing surgery!

By the end of the 3 days we had covered over 100km. We’d enjoyed the challenge but were rather saddle sore and ready for our relaxing couple of nights at Baras Beach Resort. This is a tucked away little place in a quiet cove towards the south of the island. The native style huts nestle amongst the trees around the cove. We whiled away our time reading in the hammocks or taking a row boat out into the cove.

Unfortunately, on our last night I had an unwelcome visitor in my bed – a red ant! These things inflict a nasty bite for such a small creature. And this particular one bit me 9 times, of all places, on my bum!

That wasn’t the last time I was going to suffer the wrath of red ants. Once back in Bacolod I was out on site at the GK village in Handumanan. This is the village I helped with the site development plan in my first few months. All 50 houses are now finished and occupied. The current task is construction of the Neighbourhood Association Office and the drainage channels. As it is school holidays at the moment, the Filipino/Chinese School who had funded this project (St Johns Institute) contacted all the other Filipino/Chinese schools in the Philippines inviting students to come to Bacolod for 3 days of team building activities, including volunteering at our GK village in Handumanan. I went to help supervise the students in the construction. The chosen site for the building happened to be right next to a red ant nest. Despite having sprayed my feet and legs liberally with bushmans, I still got bitten several times on my left foot. By the next day, my foot had swollen like a football. Long story short, it turned out it was infected. So I’m on antibiotics. I was one month off making the full 10 months without needing to see a doctor! (Yep, only 1 month to go!)

While on site at Handumanan, Rachael and I were invited into home of one of the beneficiaries. It happened to be the same house I had eaten lunch in on the day of paint a home contest and handover ceremony back in January. The resident is a widow who used to be a squatter in the centre of Bacolod. She invited us to sit and told us her story. What I found difficult was that part way through our discussion she apologised to us for the house being very hot saying she can’t afford a fan yet! I thought to myself how back-to-front this was. We should be the ones apologising to her for giving her a hot concrete box with a tin roof. At least from an environmental point of view we can be thankful that most of the energy in the Philippines is generated from renewable geothermal power plants but from an economic/poverty point of view we’re forcing the poor to pay higher electricity bills to cool their houses for something that could have been designed for better natural ventilation. I really hope that the design for the eco house prototype gets off the ground.