The following day was by far the hardest day of the circuit around Catanduanes – far harder than my ride from Pandan to San Vicente. It didn’t start out that terribly hard. I rode through some pleasant countryside and villages, occasionally climbing up some steep hills and bouncing and crashing down the other side. My goal for the day was the barangay of Bagmananoc – a name that I found nearly impossible to say correctly. Over and over again, I tried to ask people about this place – how far away it was and if there was a guest house there – but I could never get the name out with the proper rhythm and emphasis. By the end of the day, I had become so obsessed with this place and getting there that I found I was saying it correctly.

The difficult portion didn’t begin until I had passed yet another lovely beachside barangay. I rode my bike down into the barangay and continued through it all the way to the beach. The beach had been landscaped a bit and I could cycle along its edge as if going through a nice park. There were shade huts set up here and there as well as some benches underneath some trees with broad leaves. I rode all the way to the end of the barangay, where I paused for a few minutes and watched two men unload twenty or thirty heavy bags of black sand from their pumpboat. The man told me that they used the black sand in making concrete blocks and they had to use their pumpboat to get to another stretch of beach far away where they got this particular sand. The sand at their own beach was not suitable.

Once I turned back, quite a crowd had gathered on some of the benches and they called me over to stop for a rest. I gladly did so, and they made room for me on one of the benches and plied me with all the usual questions. An older woman came out from one of the nearby houses and sat down beside me. She had an impish childlike quality to her. She pointed out obvious things as if they were delightful. “You are here!” she said. “And I am here. You are here and I am here!”

I agreed with her, not entirely sure if she was simpleminded or quite profound. She asked me where I was from. I told her that I was from Canada. “You were there!” she cried. “You were there. And now you’re here.”

The inevitable happened and someone asked if I was single. I said that I was, and another person pointed out that this woman was now single as her husband had passed away. The obvious jokes followed. The impish woman ducked her head coquettishly covered her eyes and then waved away this impossible suggestion. “No, no,” she cried. “No, no. I can’t.” Then she turned her face up to me and smiled and leaned into me and said, “Maybe.” Everyone laughed loudly. She was quite the performer, though I got the impression that she didn’t mean to be.

Once I left this barangay the road began to climb. My heart might have failed me right then and there if I knew just how much climbing was to follow. That’s a blessing perhaps of not knowing what is ahead of us. We deal with the immediate and then whatever comes next comes.

The road even right out of the barangay was far too steep for me to be able to ride my bike and I got off and began to push. Hours and hours later, I was still off my bike and trudging up the endless steep climbs. Occasionally I reached almost the limit of my strength. I had to find a shady spot and lay down for a few minutes to let my racing heart slow down while the sweat poured off me in rivers. When I got up, there would be a wet patch on the ground in the shape of an exhausted human. Oddly – or perhaps not oddly – lying there was an intensely pleasureable experience. I thought about nothing except how wonderful it was to be lying there with the firm earth supporting my weak body. I’d open my eyes and watch the leaves moving above me, and I’d feel with intense pleasure every gust of wind and cool breeze that touched my hot flesh. It’s the feeling that everyone has when they lie on the grass in a park and simply look up at the sky. Perhaps it feels like flying?

I had had to push my bike on a number of occasions before this, of course, but none of the roads had been quite as steep as this. I had to use all my strength to keep the bike moving uphill, and my pace was not even close to a walk. It was a trudge – moving one foot just a few inches in front of the other. Any longer pace than that and I’d lose control of the bike. It would want to topple over or go backwards. At times, I felt quite ridiculous. What sane person does something like this? Of course, no sane person would. I was just a person that didn’t know how bad the roads were on Catanduanes. I have to wonder if Catanduanes is an exception in the Philippines, or are these roads representative of all the roads on the somewhat less developed islands? I have a sense that Catanduanes belongs in a fairly small and exclusive group. I had ridden a bike around Palawan, and the roads there were nowhere near as bad as this. I’d also driven a motorcycle extensively around Camiguin and that was also completely different. The road followed the coast, but it was more or less level. There were climbs and falls but nothing like on Catanduanes.

So far, I’ve only talked about going up the mountains. Going down was equally challenging and in its way more frustrating. The thing is that when you go bike touring you make an agreement with the physical world. You agree to all the long climbs. In fact, I look forward to the long climbs. I prefer cycling in mountains over flat areas. Mountains offer so much more variety and beautiful views. But the deal is that for every foot you climb in altitude, you then get to race down one foot in altitude on the other side. After an hour or two hours of hard steady climbing, you then get the exhilarating descent. You may go only 5 kilometers per hour on the climb up, but you then race down the other side at 35 kilometers an hour, and it all evens out. It’s no faster or slower than cycling on a prairie. But when the roads are as rough as those I faced on my journey to Bacmananoc, it is just as slow going down as going up. And going down you feel a certain frustration as you ride the brakes, banging and crashing from rock to rock. It’s hard to keep the bike upright and heading through the least difficult portion of road.

I also began to appreciate what a miracle the internal combustion engine is. I didn’t have the strength in my legs to ride my bike up these steep slopes, but tiny little 125cc motorbikes would go racing past me with three and even four people on them. They were down in first gear, of course, but they had absolutely no problem carrying their huge loads up these roads that were defeating me. And with their suspension, they barely seemed to notice the rocky surface of the road. They coasted over it without a care in the world and flew up and down the mountains. I wondered if one of them might toss me a rope and help me to the top of the next mountain.

I knew I was going slowly, but I was still quite surprised at how slowly the kilometers ticked by. I watched my CatEye Cyclecomputer, and the kilometers simply refused to add up. The distance marker moved so slowly that I began to think it was defective and I checked it to make sure. Most of the time, I was going so slowly that the speed indicator wouldn’t even register. It would just show a speed of 0 kilometers per hour. Despite that, the unit was still recording the turns of the wheel, and the distance did rise, but so, so slowly.

Of course, there was pleasure in all of this. How could there not be? I was passing beautiful scenery with views of gorgeous villages, vibrant rice fields, and an intensely blue ocean. I was tired, but that only intensified the pleasure of resting. And working hard like that has its own pleasure. Once, a mountain stream crossed right over the road and then fell over the other side in a tiny waterfall. I parked my bike in the shade and gratefully put my dusty and dirty sandalled feet into the stream and let the cool water flow over them and clean them. I took off my shirt and dowsed my whole body in this cold water. Before I left, I put my whole shirt into the water and rinsed it free of sweat and dirt and then when it was soaking wet with refreshing water, I put it back on and continued my journey. That was a wonderful interlude.

There was no great triumph upon arriving in Bagmananoc. In fact, there were many false peaks when I thought I had arrived, but it was still far off. I thought I must have, finally, climbed all the mountains and that there would be flat land until Bagmananoc. But there would always be another one.

Then I came down out of the mountains and raced along a relatively smooth road right down to rice fields at sea level. Now, finally, I thought it would smooth sailing. But it doesn’t work like that on Catanduanes. The crinkly and tightly packed mountains go right out into the sea and as you move along the coast, you must climb up and down the fingers of the mountains reaching out into the sea. One informant told me that there was “one climb” left between me and Bagmananoc. He, like all my informants, was way off and there were four more serious climbs and one short but tough one.

Finally, there it was, Bagmananoc. I rode into town and began asking people about places to stay. One group of four men gave four different answers: Yes, no, yes but it’s closed, and no but maybe next year. This last man offered the less than helpful information that there were hotels in Puranan and Virac. I should go there, he said.

Luckily the first man – the one who answered yes – turned out to be right, and there was a one-year-old hotel down one of the main streets near the waterfront. Another man made a phone call for me, and the young fellow in charge of the place came up on a bicycle to unlock the front gate and show me the place. It felt something like a motel, with a wide driveway and a place to park vehicles right in front of four rooms all lined up and facing the courtyard. It didn’t offer much in the way of local charm and color, but I was quite happy to find such a place there in Bagamanoc. They had two rooms with fans for 400 pesos and two rooms with air conditioning for 650 pesos. The rooms were well appointed with a nice bed and a desk and stools and a clean and new bathroom. I had been content till now without air conditioning so I went for the fan-only room. In retrospect, the air conditioning might have been wise in this case. That’s the thing when mixing modern construction with settings like this. This hotel might have been new and modern, but the thick cement walls and other elements of its construction meant that the rooms had no ventilation at all. There was also no protection from the sun above. The sun heated up the room like an oven and then the room simply stayed hot. It would be nice and cool outside in the evening with the ocean breeze coming in, but inside the room it was unbearable. Still, the air con might not have helped in the end because Bagamanoc was subject to long power failures. Even my poor fan was useless without power to spin its fans. Luckily, there was a small but steady trickle of water in the bathroom, which meant I could keep the bucket full and I would go in every little while and dump some cooling water over my body before going back out to lie on the bed and sweat. My rather odd accommodation of the night before – the barangay hall in San Vicente – didn’t have any of the comforts of this room. However, it was built with more traditional methods, methods that left large gaps everywhere and the cool night air was allowed to flow through and keep it nice and cool. I can’t remember what the roof construction was like, but it didn’t at least act like a solar oven as this modern hotel in Bagamanoc did.

The sweltering heat inside my hotel room aside, I enjoyed my time in Bagmananoc very much. I liked it so much that I decided to stay for an extra day instead of just moving on. Like many of the towns on Catanduanes facing the open Pacific Ocean, it had a tall cement seawall to protect the town from the seasonal typhoons that roar through. I could walk along the seawall with my camera in hand and snap pictures. The waterfront extended quite far in both directions. At one end, it ended at a river, and an interesting foot bridge carried over to the other side to some more beaches and mangrove swamps and fishing areas. I found a very nice restaurant just a few doors away. It was once called Red Light, but had changed its name. Perhaps they realized what Red Light implied and decided to change it. They served good typical Filipino food and had some nice seating in the shade out by the water. I sat there enjoying coffee and beer and watching the world go by. Everyone in town soon knew my name and people called out “Hey, Douglas” as they walked or rode by. There were groups of men deep into drinking sessions all over the place, and I could have joined any of them. I generally stopped for a few minutes to chat and then pleaded pressing business elsewhere so I couldn’t stay and drink.

I worked on my bike gear a little bit and otherwise passed the day pleasantly in walking around and exploring and taking pictures. I watched one group of men and boys pulling a fishing net along the beach – using the same technique that I saw near Virac. This time, I stuck around until the very end and they had pulled the net up onto the beach. It seemed that one man was in charge. It was his net and his boat, and he was in charge of the catch. The catch turned out to be essentially a smallish pile of small silver fish. Mixed in with them were jelly fish and the occasional crab, which made a run for the sea once they found themselves somewhat free of the net. The boss started heaving these small fish by the double handful into a bucket. Meanwhile, all the men and boys who had helped him gathered around and pleaded for some of the fish. Some had a container, and the boss would take a double handful of the fish and pour them into the container. Some had no container, and they held out their two hands cupped together. The boss would take out an equal double handful of fish and pour them into the man’s hands. Then this man would turn and walk quickly off back to his hut, his hands held out in front of him carefully holding his fish – which I assume would be dinner for his family that night.

I also met some kind of government activist. He walked by while I was sitting at the restaurant and he joined me for a while. He talked for a long time about various NGO type projects he had been involved in over the years, including one or two done in connection with the US Peace Corps. The stories followed the same basic pattern and always ended with how the project (usually fish farming of one sort or another) failed because he got no support from the local mayor or other government officials. He said that corruption was a major factor in all of this, and without money to bribe officials, he couldn’t get anything done.

 

Tags: Bagmananoc, barangay, bike, bike touring, Catanduanes Bike Trip, Gigmoto, Philippines Bike Trip 2013