I had asked lots of people over the previous couple of days about the road going from Pandan and back to Virac along the east coast. From these people I got a variety of answers. Most said variants on the “too far” and “impossible” line. Others said that the entire road was under construction just like the road from Virac to Pandan. Others said that it was rough and rocky. Almost no two people agreed. I remember asking the manager of the hotel about some of the towns on the east coast. I had asked her what Cormoran was like and she said that she didn’t really know. Despite having been born on Catanduanes and living her entire life here, she had never been to Cormoran or Pandan. That was surprising to me, but after experiencing the roads myself I can see that you wouldn’t go off on any kind of pleasure jaunts. You wouldn’t travel around an island like Catanduanes unless you had a very good reason for doing so.

If this were true of the west coast road, I soon found out that it was triply true of the east coast road. Outside of Pandan, my beloved cement disappeared and I was struggling to heave my bicycle’s wheels over very large rocks. Soon, the road became steep to the point that I couldn’t cycle them anymore. It would have been possible to cycle that road on a mountain bike if you had no load and were willing to be up out of the saddle the whole time and treating the affair like the Tour de France. But it was far too steep to attempt with my touring bike. In fact, there was no question of attempting it. It was simply impossible. I had no choice but to get off the bike and begin to push it.

As any bike tourer will tell you, it is not only embarrassing to be reduced to pushing your bike up a hill, it is also far more difficult than riding it. The pedals and chain and gear system give you a mechanical advantage and if you drop the bike down into first gear, you gain a great deal of power. But when you are simply pushing the bike uphill, you lose that advantage. It is a simple one-to-one ratio of power transfer and you have to use all your strength to keep that bike moving. Worse, you are off to the side of the bike and having to push the bike from an angle, which makes it twice as difficult. You can’t get directly behind the bike and push it from there. So being on an angle, the bike has a tendency to slip out from under you and come crashing down. It’s an effort is what I’m saying, and this effort went on for a very long time. The road climbed up to a high point – the last bluff at the most northern point of Catanduanes. By the time I reached a little rest hut at what seemed like the very top, I was completely done in and I collapsed on a cement bench and lay there in a puddle of sweat gasping for breath like a fish just pulled out of the ocean. I felt like I could lie there happily for the rest of my life – just as long as I never had to get up again.

As I looked around me, I saw a sign for “Puyo Hill”, and I remembered someone in Pandan saying that I should visit this place. It offered a scenic lookout over Pandan and the coast. Once I’d recovered my breath, I got back on my bike and rode along the small road into the barangay itself off the main road. This road was just as rough and steep and I had to struggle along it, but the view was a great reward – blue ocean, green hills, and the pretty site of Pandan far below me.

The landscape changed slightly as I started south down the west coast road. The hills became slightly more rolling and grassy from time to time interspersed with the usual more steep jungly hills and beautiful fishing villages. I rode into every fishing village I encountered and was amazed each time at how pretty they were. I created the usual sensation in each one and it came to seem that the payment for experiencing the beauty of the place was to go through the entire conversation again and again and again – about my name and nationality and age and mission and length of stay in Catanduanes and in the Philippines and when I would return to Canada and why I wasn’t married and why I didn’t have any companions. I did my best to treat this as a pleasant little chat, but it wasn’t easy. One difference I’ve noticed between here and Taiwan is that the Filipinos are not satisfied with just my first name. The Taiwanese will accept just the one name “Doug” or “Douglas” and then use that exclusively. I can be Douglas or Mr. Douglas. I was content with that having been saddled with a somewhat difficult last name. In the Philippines, people are NOT satisfied with just my first name. In fact, my first name does not exactly trip off the tongue here. I don’t know why that would be. Douglas works well in most countries. Here, people have trouble understanding it. The only way to get it across is to then say “Douglas MacArthur.” Then something clicks. I will think we are past the hurdle of my name, but then they ask for my family name. I tell them my family name – Nienhuis – but this stumps them completely and I generally have to go through the long and laborious process of spelling it out. I attribute this to a certain formality in relationships here. When people introduce themselves, they generally use their full name and these names go right past me in a quick pitter-patter of syllables that I don’t catch at all. I generally pretend I understand, and then we shake hands in a formal manner. I’ve noticed that young people will greet older people by taking their hand and raising it to their foreheads.

I ended up pushing my bike many, many more times during that long day – sweat pouring off my body in rivers and sheets. The sight of me pushing the bicycle up the endless hills did nothing to stem the tide of laughter, and now I felt the laughter even more keenly since I did feel quite ridiculous.

I quickly ran out of drinking water, and I stopped in the barangay of Baldoc to get some more. A friendly young fellow brought out large bottles of cold water from a store, and I filtered it and transferred it to all my various water bottles. It turned out that the man helping me was none other than a local political candidate – Alfred. I had seen Alfred’s posters in many places, and here he was in the flesh.

This particular interlude was quite trying as I had to remain for quite a long time to filter all the water I required and that meant the questioning went on for a very long time and eventually the conversation got around to everyone giving me advice on all the things I should do. All these things involved not riding a bicycle and doing things like renting a motorcycle. I agreed with them wholeheartedly by this point. Whatever advantages there are to bike touring, they are pretty much overshadowed and made pointless when you spend most of your time pushing the bike up such steep and rocky roads. To have rented a motorcycle in Virac would likely have been the wiser choice, but this advice while sitting in the barangay of Baldoc far from anywhere is not very useful or helpful. It’s not like Alfred could produce a motorcycle for me and magically transport my bicycle and gear back to Virac. I know that Alfred and all the other people were just concerned about me and trying to be helpful, but still….

I did my best to reassure them that I was happy to have my bicycle and I could make my way around Catanduanes no problem. Therefore, when I left, I made sure to get on my bicycle and pedal confidently away. See? See how fast and smooth and powerful is my pedaling? Unfortunately, the road out of Baldoc curved up out of town across a river and then straight up a very steep road in full view of everyone in town. I tried to keep my pedaling going and drive myself up that first stretch of hill, but it was beyond my strength. Even if I had the muscle strength to do it, I worried about snapping the chain of the bicycle. I had no choice but to get off the bike and start pushing it again. As soon as I did, I heard a cry of dismay rise up from the crowd of onlookers below. I masked my stopping with a bout of picture-taking – to make it look like I’d stopped pedaling by choice to take a picture. In fact, the view was spectacular and I was of half a mind to turn around and see about spending the night in Baldoc. It was a lovely spot.

The rest of the day passed in the same general pattern – pushing my bike up steep mountain roads, banging and crashing down the other side, stopping to marvel at the beautiful beaches and villages, then beginning the long toturous push up the next mountain. The pattern was the same as I’d encountered in other countries in that villages are almost always situated around rivers and the ocean – at the lowest point where fresh water is available. Therefore, you always ride down to a village. And when you leave it, you immediately are faced with a steep climb back up out of the river valley. It did occur to me – as it has in the past – that perhaps cycling is not the best way to experience the Philippines. The Philippines is at its best in the water. Traveling around Catanduanes by boat and stopping at all the beautiful beaches and barangays would be a very pleasant if perhaps dangerous (ocean currents, etc) trip. Going by road is not nearly as pleasant. You get glimpses of these beautiful places, but you don’t experience them to the full as you would if traveling by water.

My goal for the day eventually became the barangay of St. Vicente. From my maps, it looked like I could reach that place. There was certainly no hotel in San Vicente, but I could likely get food and water there and I’d have to sort out a place to sleep one way or another.

The last few sections of mountains were particularly trying, and, to my horror, I picked up a trio of teenage boys as companions. There was nothing wrong with these boys. They were friendly enough, but the last thing I wanted to do while pushing my bike up these treacherous roads was to have a long and boring conversation about my mission and all my other personal details. I tried the usual gambits to get rid of them. I stopped to rest hoping they would just move on, but they were content to wait with me. I tried to cycle ahead of them on some downhill parts, but they would then break into a run to keep up with me. They saw how hard it was for me to push the bike and they kept offering to help. This was, in fact, their purpose all along. They hoped to make a bit of money by helping me. I knew that their help would end up being more of a hindrance than a help, and I turned down their offer. One boy said that it was his birthday and they didn’t have any money to even buy a drink. So if they helped me, I could then give them some money so he could buy a birthday drink. From his manner, I was convinced he was lying about it being his birthday. It was just a clever gambit to work on my goodwill. He also told me that San Vicente was very far away and that it was impossible for me to get there before dark. He pointed to another boy and said that that boy was from San Vicente, so he knew exactly how far it was and there was no way I could get there before the sun set.

The worst thing about this encounter was that for the first time since arriving in the Philippines, I was experiencing some digestive problems. Just before the boys showed up, I had begun scouting the land looking for a suitable place where I could wrestle my bike off the road and into the jungle and settle down (literally) and deal with the call of nature, which was becoming ever more urgent and painful. With these boys as company, I had no chance of doing that, and I did not want to go through complicated and embarrassing process of explaining to them what I needed to do. I’m sure that they would have offered to watch my bike, but I did not particularly trust them. I had no choice but to suck it up and hope that things would not get to an emergency situation.

Things worked out in the end. I reached the highest point in the mountain range – at the absolute limit of my strength – and the boys then indicated that there was a long downhill portion ahead. I could tell from their body language that they were resigned to giving up their prey. They knew that I was going to get away from them now. I said goodbye, and I got on my bike and started the downhill. I could still only go a few kilometers an hour. The road was so rough that I had to manhandle the bike every second. It was almost as difficult going down as it had been going up. But there was the occasional smoother patch, and I could increase my speed a little bit, and I had soon left my three wannabe helpers behind.

The downhill continued for quite some time and then I found myself at a long bridge over a river and inside the barangay of San Vicente. The boys had clearly been lying through their teeth about how far away San Vicente was – hoping to sell me their services. In fact, later that evening after I had settled in to my lodging for the night, I saw those three boys hanging out by the water pump. I’d like to say I saw a bit of embarrassment in their faces, but I didn’t see anything. They just smiled and greeted me like a long-lost friend. Their manner might have had something to do with my companion – the barangay captain, who had taken me under his wing.

 

Tags: barangay captain, bike, bike touring, Catanduanes Bike Trip, Pandan, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, San Vicente