Trekking Patag

Getting to Patag meant going back to the town of Silay (30 mins), and taking a small non-airconditioned bus bursting with villagers, through fields of sugarcane and up the mountain.  By the time my ears had popped from the altitude, the air had cooled, and storm clouds had formed, I arrived in Patag 3 hours later.  I would have arrived earlier, if not for miscommunication problems, especially with a bureacrat who did his best to intimidate me before I could talk to my contact.

I was told to go down at the hospital (a landmark in those parts), but the building looked empty and abandoned.  I strolled in anyway, and I found the DENR rangers Larry and Elmer, together with Larry's wife, just about to sit down to a lunch of tinola (no chicken, just vegetables), dried fish and rice.

  They were surprised to see me, having had no notice that I was arriving due to poor cell signal.  They graciously invited me to join them to lunch anyway, and it was arranged that Larry would be my guide.  I shared my fresh lumpia which I bought from El Ideal, Silay's more than a century-old bakery.  Because there were no utensils, we ate with our hands, kamayan-style.

Larry set my itinerary.  For lack of time, we could no longer go to the area's biggest attraction, approximately 160-meter high Pulang Tubig (Red Water) -- so named because the top of the falls used to be the site of a Japanese headquarters in World War II, and it ran red with Japanese blood when it was discovered and attacked.

  We could still visit the lesser falls, including Dumalabdab, which was half of Pulang Tubig's height.  We took the uphill road into the rainforest, and five minutes into the trek, I was already out of breath! I thought I couldn't go on.  Good thing I did, because of the area's beautiful and pristine waterfalls, flora and fauna, and unique history as the site of the Japanese Imperial Army's last stand in Negros.  Malis-bog falls was edenic. At Dumalabdab we encountered bathing teenagers, weirdly silent, and I assumed that they were struck dumb by exhaustion or just plain awe.  They built twin towers of pebbles in the shallow pool near the falls.

Going back into the village I noticed again the cottage industry of flowers that the inhabitants were creating, because the climate was suited for it.

  It almost felt like Tagaytay.  Larry says that they brought some of the flowers from Baguio to grow there; just part of developing the community.  He also proudly noted that theirs were the best patroled and managed forests in Negros.

We got back in the nick of time as the rain started to fall down in torrents.  I settled down next to a building that was being constructed to wait for ride home, but the couple of buses that passed were already full.  Good thing two engineers arrived from Bacolod city to supervise the very building, which was being turned into a modern DENR office from the remains of an old Japanese site.  I thankfully hitched a ride back home with them.