Saturday April 9, 2011 7:12 a.m.

Jasmin by the Sea, Camiguin, Philippines

Time for another cup of coffee at the beginning of another day. It rained throughout the early morning hours, but now the sun is shining, so it looks like another perfect day.

I set off on my motorbike once again yesterday. Over breakfast, I had gone over some notes I had made about Camiguin Island, and I settled on two places to visit. The first was called the Bura Soda Springs. The second was the Binangawan Falls. My other goal for the day was to shoot some video. I’ve been taking pictures with my Nikon digital SLR, but I haven’t used my Canon point-and-shoot at all. It has a video function, and I decided to shoot some video today as I drove around. I figured it would be easy to do on the motorcycle since your left hand isn’t used for anything. There is no brake handle or clutch or anything on the left handgrip. It is all done with your right hand and your feet. So I thought it would be simple to hold the camera in my left hand while I drove and shoot some video of the roadsides.

In theory, this was correct. However, I made one very silly mistake for the first part of the day. It’s very funny. The camera’s video function is turned on and off by the same button. And somehow I got mixed up about whether the camera was recording video or not. I got on and off mixed up. So when I lifted the camera up and pressed the button in order to turn it on, I was actually turning it off. Then when I pressed the button a second time to turn the video recording off, I was actually turning it on. So I recorded nothing while I was aiming the camera at the roadsides and it was busy recording while it was dangling on i’s strap from my wrist. I got some brilliant shots of my leg, front wheel, my chin, and the sky. Eventually I figured out what was going wrong, and I shot some video later that captured what I wanted to capture.

The drive to the Bura Soda Springs was great fun. It was more or less on the way I had taken to Tuasan Falls, but I found a new road through a very lush and picturesque region with the volcanoes directly ahead and filling the sky. The springs themselves had been turned into an expansive pool. It cost 20 pesos (fifty cents) to get in. I assume there is something special about the water. Why else is it called a soda spring? But I don’t know what that is. There was a fountain there that was marked for drinking only, so I guess the water was potable. A pleasant grassy area and garden surrounded the pool and the water was the perfect fresh temperature for swimming. There were only about ten people there with only four of them in the water. The pool was large enough to comfortable contain a hundred people, so I felt I practically had the place to myself. I was still being careful about the sun, and I went in with my T-shirt on, which is what the Filipinos do themselves for the most part. I could see a swim there being a normal part of daily life if I were living here on Camiguin.

When I was refreshed and ready to go, I hopped on my motorbike and drove down to the main road. This constant going into and getting out of water is one of the great things about a trip like this. You simply dive in, get soaked, and then get on your motorbike completely wet. All your clothes dry as you drive along.

Binangawan Falls were quite a bit more challenging. I found the sign on the main road pointing in the right direction, but there was no information at all after that. I drove on my motorbike for what felt like a long time and climbed higher and higher onto the back slopes of the volcanoes. The road got worse and worse until I was lurching and slamming from boulder to boulder and I had to give up. It was so steep at that point that when I applied the brakes, the whole bike would start to slide backward. I had no choice but to park it in a shady spot and continue on foot. An educated guess told me the falls were still quite a distance ahead, but I didn’t know that for sure. I didn’t know how large the falls were, so I didn’t know what scale of river valley was needed to create them. For all I knew, I had already passed the falls a long way back. I was happy to keep walking, though. Even if the falls were not in that direction, the walk was beautiful and I was climbing higher all the time and getting a wide view of the mountains, the coast, and even distant Mindanao.

There were few people up there, but I met the occasional cow, goat, and dog. I came across a group of five young men – laborers who were working in the fields doing something. They didn’t speak much English, but they looked very alarmed and concerned when I mentioned Binangawan Falls. I got the impression that I was attempting something too difficult too late in the day. One of them tried to say something about kilometers, and I encouraged him and started to number them off: One? Two? Three? When I reached three, they all nodded. That gave me an idea. Three kilometers on that steep slope could take quite a while, but there seemed to be enough daylight left. I calculated how long it would take to return and then to drive back to Jasmin by the Sea and I gave myself a rough turnaround time – a time at which I would go back whether I had reached the falls or not.

The road I was on eventually narrowed to a small path through high grass and began to climb along the edge of a large river valley. I could hear water flowing far below, and I knew I was on the right track. I hadn’t seen any other trails, so this had to be the right direction anyway. I became more and more confident as I walked along. The trail was now a very well-defined route and was clearly going right into the river valley where it had to dead-end. It couldn’t be a trail going anywhere else but to the falls.

Things got a bit trickier as the slope increased and the ground got wetter. I slipped a bit here and there, and at one point was walking along a fairly narrow ridge with a steep drop-off on both sides. It was still quite safe, though, and I continued along. The trail got very steep and there was a railing on the left made up of large tree limbs. I grabbed hold of the limbs and pulled myself along. And then… the trail just stopped. It simply ended and there was nowhere to go. I was hemmed in by jungle growth and grass well over my head. I fought my way through this growth for perhaps fifty yards in every direction possible, but I never regained the trail. There was a possible route forward along the slope, but it was very risky. The slope was nearly a cliff and it was very wet and slippery. If I were searching for a lost city of gold or were on some kind of expedition with ropes and provisions and a machete, I imagine I could have hacked and slashed and forced me way forward. As it was, there was nothing to do. I gave one attempt on that slope, but I gave up before I’d even made five feet. It was too steep and too risky. With a last look toward the river valley, I turned and started to make my way back down. It was a pleasant walk, but I would have liked to have seen the falls.

The best part of the day was still to come, though, and that was when I met another group of laborers. There were three of them, and they were considerably older than the first group. Their spokesperson, and a man of great charm and many words, was 78-year-old Manuel Sereso. Born in 1933 and possessing excellent English, he was very pleased to make a Canadian friend and we walked down the volcano together talking up a storm.

He had a lot to say about my attempt to find Binangawan Falls. He was shocked that I didn’t have a guide. Why not? Why not? Why not? He himself was a guide, and he produced two official laminated IDs from two different tourism associations. He said that I should have gone to this or that office and looked at the maps, and they would have assigned me a guide. He looked at me in astonishment when I said I had no idea what these offices were or where they were. Again, I was faced with that fact that local people operated in a world where everything is known. They find it difficult (well, impossible) to comprehend what it is like for someone like me in their world. I can trace my steps from bus to ferry to tricycle to my bungalow on Camiguin, and at no point is there any information or signs. Short of growing up here, I can’t know all these things that he knows. I could see Manuel struggling to understand anything that I was saying. The office is there in Sagay, he said. Well, I didn’t know that. How could I know that? He shook his head.

I told Manuel about how the trail simply stopped. He refused to believe me. He insisted that the trail continued. Therefore I was on the wrong trail or was simply wrong about everything. He is probably right. He would know if there is a trail to the falls, but I saw no way that he could be right. There was only one trail (I looked) and that trail simply ended with no possible route forward. I almost hired Manuel as a guide for the next day to make a second attempt to find the falls. It would be worth it just for his conversation and for the satisfaction of solving the mystery of the falls.

This issue of guides has been a theme of my short visit to Camiguin. Everyone talks about guides and insists that you need them for everything. Strictly speaking, we don’t need guides. What we need are signs. Manuel insisted I needed a guide to get to Binangawan Falls, but really all I needed was a piece of wood on a stick with an arrow pointing to the right trail. Without signs of any kind, all a guide really does is just point to the trail, as that man did when I was trying to get to Tuasan Falls. In the fullest sense of the word, a guide does much more than just point the way. A guide has knowledge of the area and passes that knowledge on to you in some way. The guides here are simply road signs with legs.

I had this same discussion when I got back to Jasmin by the Sea. Janet was working in the restaurant and I told her that I hadn’t managed to find the falls. She looked at me in astonishment and said that I should have gotten a guide. I countered that no, there should have been a sign. She said that there was a sign. And she had a point. There was a sign on the main road that said Binangawan Falls and it pointed down the road leading into the volcanoes. However, we poor tourists need at least one more sign after that. Clearly, the road doesn’t go to the falls. A trail leads off the road to the falls. And it seems to us logical westerners that a sign on that trail wouldn’t be a bad thing.

You could say that this was all by design – that by having no signs they create a market for guides. However, there is no way that they’ve thought it through to that extent. It is simply the way things are. And tourism is actually very limited here on Camiguin. Most of the foreigners are long-term residents. The Filipinos themselves are by far the mainstay of local tourism and they don’t do things like hike to Binangawan Falls.

I went so far as to ask Manuel what the going rate would be for a guide (him) to take me to Binangawan Falls. If he had come back with any kind of a figure, I probably would have said, “Okay, let’s do it tomorrow.” His insight into local life would have been worth it whether we found the falls or not. However, he would not come back with any kind of figure and things got very vague and confusing, and I just let it go. I’ve thought about this many times in my life as I’ve traveled around the world – the complete mismatch between westerners and local “guides.” I know exactly how to approach someone like me. I know exactly what I like and it is very easy. Yet, no one ever seems to figure it out locally. Of course, I’m being very unreasonable. There is no way a local person could understand things the way I do. Still, if I were a local guide, I could establish a successful business with hardly any effort. I’ve been approached by a couple of people here wanting to be my guide. The first was that man Allan, who had approached me on the road and handed me a business card with his name and number written in red ink on the back. He had nothing to offer me except that. He had no prices, no itineraries, no information, nothing but this handwritten number on a scrap of paper. I don’t know if I’m unique in my approach, but I’m attracted to things that are organized. Well, I guess that’s not true. The reason I don’t hire local guides is that I generally don’t want or need them. I just like to explore on my own. However, if I was someone who wanted a local guide, I’d be much more responsive if someone handed me a printed piece of paper or a brochure that listed the things we could do and how much it would cost. Just lay it all out for me and then let me decide. No hard sell. No confusion. The same goes for things in the market and in stores. I spend very little money as I wander around, mainly because I can’t stand the hassle of figuring out what things cost. Slap a price tag on things. Put up a sign. Tell me exactly what it costs, and even if the price is high, I’ll pay it. I love price tags and fixed prices.

The first thing I noticed about Manuel was his excellent English. The second was his age (because he told me), and then I couldn’t help but marvel at his physical condition. 78 years old and he was way up there on the slope of a volcano with a machete in a wooden scabbard strapped to his belt. He had been working in the fields all day building terraces for a crop of something he called hok-hok from which they made a type of fiber.

His conception of other countries was very foggy. He asked me about Canada and was astonished at everything I told him. Like most people here and in other poorer countries, he had a very practical bent to his thoughts. He wanted to know what resources Canada had and whether these resources could lead to wealth for him. Obviously, I had a lot of trouble explaining to him how things worked in Canada. I barely know myself, but I could at least describe some of the resources of Canada – everything from oil to timber to gold to vast fields of wheat and corn. I had to smile when his opinion of Canada fell considerably when I said that we had no rice, that rice couldn’t grow there. No rice? How could a country even be a country if it couldn’t grow rice? What would people do? I told him that we bought rice at the store, but this wasn’t enough for him.

One of his friends jumped in with a question and Manuel translated. He wanted to know if there was corruption in Canada. Of course, there is corruption in Canada, but I knew that in the terms that they understood corruption, Canada didn’t have it. These men had lived with corruption their entire lives on a very real level – money handed over directly to local politicians for everything. They had to pay bribes for everything in their lives. Corruption is also very big news in the Philippines right now. Manuel explained that the papers were full of a big scandal right now where vast corruption had been uncovered at the highest levels with millions and millions of dollars siphoned out of government coffers and funneled overseas.

Tags: Binangawan Falls, Camiguin Trip, Canada