Baguio in Bloom

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It’s the usual Saturday morning in Baguio City and the streets are filled with cars and hawkers. The first of the sun’s golden rays have appeared, giving a golden cast to Burnham Park – filled with people as it is today – and the streamers everywhere constantly remind tourists that the next two days the city will be filled with merrymakers and the worst you can do is to come without lots of patience and a sense of fun. Because it will be pushing, shoving, and getting stuck in traffic for hours.

The city is glued to the thoroughfares around Burnham Park for the Panagbenga Festival. The festival takes place in the whole month of February but culminates in the last weekend of the month with a parade of flower-adorned floats that cruise through Session Road, turning left in Magsaysay Avenue, and circling back to Session Road via Harrison Road beside the park.

Having just concluded a six-hour bus ride from Manila, we obviously don’t have the resolve to brave through the crowds and watch today’s parade. Instead, we content ourselves standing on a bench in a waiting shed and peeking through the heads of people in front of us as the parade passes by. In about an hour, it ends and the crowds quickly disperse. The police remove the cordons and people rush to the middle of the confetti-filled streets to have their pictures taken in the wake of the parade.

Our group continues to Burnham, where we ride boats, have a massage roadside, and pose for pictures wearing native Ifugao costumes. Two hours later, still reeling from the overnight trip, we plop down on our hotel beds.

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As a child, our trips to Baguio would consist of different things: boating in Burnham Park; riding horses in Wright Park; my parents stuffing an empty bag with souvenirs; rolling down the car windows and looking outside to have my face overwhelmed by the chilly winds; and scaring ourselves silly with the ghost stories that have become prevalent after the 1990 earthquake.

For my dad, it was where he stayed for a year while working on his doctorate degree. During that summer, he brought me, my brother and a cousin to live with him for a month while we learned the drums at a music workshop in the same school. It was when I got to know Baguio best, although that’s not to say I have memorized the city like the back of my hand. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been to the city but every time I return, it seems another part of the city has just opened up for me to explore. In other words, there’s something new every time.

Baguio City’s history, however, goes back way beyond before my parents spent their honeymoon there. In 1900 American soldiers who missed the temperate climate of their homeland went to the Cordilleras in Northern Luzon to find a place where they could carve their retreat site. They found an Ibaloi village in Benguet province and constructed a city there that would three years later be designated by the government as the Summer Capital of the Philippines.

The altitude brings a low temperature and, indeed, one thing readily noticeable about the city is the relatively cooler air, ranging between the high teens and twenties. It’s a welcome contrast to the sweltering heat of the rest of the country and the meteorological anomaly provides a respite for lowlanders, perhaps similar to Cameron Highlands of Malaysia and Sapa of Vietnam. This has attracted visitors for the last century, spurring development faster than the indigenous locals could cope up with.

The original Ibaloi tribes who occupied the area have already assimilated to subsequent occupants of the city and, much like many cities in the country, Baguio has so much become a cultural hodgepodge that a huge chunk of its authenticity had been lost. For starters, cynics decry the emergence of an SM mall – the ultimate indicator of urban development in the Philippines. But Baguio remains a constant in quick out-of-town escapades and every Filipino theoretically has to have been here at least once.

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The afternoon’s itinerary involves a trip to the Wright Park, the Mansion, and the Mines View Park. But the large number of tourists that have flocked to the city this weekend for the festival have created a traffic jam usually unheard of in this part of the country. As a result, we are only left with half an hour of quick photo ops in the first two destinations.

Originally built as the summer home of American officials during the colonial period, the Mansion House now functions as a presidential residence in the Cordillera Region. The house was constructed during the administration of a governor-general, who named the structure after his cottage in New England. Daniel H. Burnham (the man behind the urban designs of Burnham Park and Chicago, among others) did initial designs of the mansion before William E. Parsons took over.

Across the gated mansion and its sprawling lawns lies the Wright Park, which has served as the backdrop for many Filipino dance numbers in slapstick comedies of the 1980s. A narrow pool is in the middle of the entrance with pine trees lining both sides, providing a woodsy vibe. Filipinos know the place most for the costumed Ifugao tribesfolk who will pose for a picture for a fee, as well as the horse rides.

The bumper-to-bumper traffic forces us to walk a significant portion of the way to Mines View Park, about a kilometer from Wright Park. Mines View’s days a destination for miners is long gone but the site remains a crowd-drawer for its breathtaking views of the Cordillera mountains and the cold, breezy air that is a novelty for Filipino lowlanders. Today, the park itself feels impenetrable with throngs of visitors and not even the majestic view of the mountains could mitigate the crushing madness of the weekend crowd. We go to the nearby Good Shepherd Convent instead and buy bottles of ube jam for pasalubong.

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The reason for the creation of the Panagbenga Festival in the early 1990s was two-fold: to promote the traditional culture of Baguio, and help in the reconstruction of the city following the devastating earthquake in 1990. While the festival’s name means “blooming season” and floral themes dominate the month-long event, the decision to hold it in February has more to do with tourism revenue than anything with botany.

The best times to visit Baguio, many sources say, are the months between December and May, where the air is cool and it rains the least. However, while the Christmas season and the Holy Week traditionally draw people to the city, February sees a drop in tourist arrivals. The festival was therefore held in the second month of the year to maximize revenues in the peak season. It has since become one of the most famous festivals in the Philippines, with even the country’s top three television networks using the event to promote some of their shows and pools of talents.

We’re supposed to settle ourselves along the parade’s route by five in the morning since the crowds fill up very quickly hours before the motorcade starts. But, let’s face it, it’s unrealistic especially given the stress we had to deal the afternoon before, so we ended up waking up at half past five. It’s not all bad though, since we manage to get a good position on an overpass just after the turn at the end of Session Road, where the floats stop by for a few minutes. This enables us to take better pictures of the floats and their respective passengers than when we stand in some other areas. It’s insane, with crowds standing on precarious positions – some on the railings of the overpass – just to get a glimpse of the parade.

We have been standing and dealing with the constant pressure of people for close to two hours when the parade finally starts. A white jeep carrying the city mayor heads the autocade, followed by a group of Koreans and a couple of drum and bugle bands and commercial floats. Where the people were transfixed though were the floats of (in the order they appeared) TV5, GMA and ABS-CBN – the three biggest local TV stations – which carried Valenzuela Councilor and TV host Shalani Soledad, actors Dingdong Dantes and Marian Rivera, and “It’s Showtime” hosts Vice Ganda, Kim Atienza, and Ryan Bang, among others.

My legs start to hurt from the madness of the crowds, so I retreated to the nearby McDonald’s with Rayjay, Joseph and Micah. We have breakfast before riding a taxi back to the hotel.

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Things are fortunately more subdued at the Strawberry Farm in the afternoon. The farm is located in La Trinidad, Benguet’s capital and half an hour’s drive from Baguio, where the mountains’ temperate climate provides suitable living conditions for berries and lettuce. Visitors can pick strawberries for a fee, depending on the total weight of the fruits. Pre-picked strawberries and blueberries are available as well near the entrance if you’d rather do your picking from a basket in a stall.

We return to Burnham Park a little later to conclude the trip before our bus departs for Manila at six-thirty. Joseph and I go with Rayjay and Micah (who are in Baguio for the first time) to SM Baguio where we while away the afternoon.

I’ve gotten used to Baguio that I no longer feel some sort of separation blues whenever it’s time to descend to the capital. Besides, the continued development is already taking its toll, and locals are in an uproar yet again about rumored plans to uproot the pine trees in Camp John Hay to make way for an expansion project. Many visitors even complain that Baguio has in fact become warmer as a result of climate change and unchecked urban growth. Despite this, the pine trees, the cool air and the relatively relaxed vibe of the city never fail to transport me back to the good old days when the city was more than just a summer destination – the innocence of our childhood is represented by the sentimental concept of the city as an enchanting mountain break. “I love it here,” Rayjay succinctly says.

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Photos

Panagbenga Festival
A float made of flowers depicting characters from the Angry Birds game is one of the many floats in this year's Panagbenga Festival

Burnham Park
Boating in Baguio City's most popular park

All Dressed Up
Amanda posing in a traditional Ifugao costume

Tha Mansion House
The Mansion House serves as the Philippine president's summer residential building in the Cordilleras.

Pool of Pines
The long, narrow pool at the Wright Park entrance

Panagbenga Crowd
People flock to Baguio every last weekend of February to witness the city's largest festival.

Lovers in Baguio
Celebrities like Dingdong Dantes and Marian Rivera join the festivities as well.

Berry Juicy
Freshly picked strawberries for sale in La Trinidad, a 30-minute drive from Baguio

Strawberry Vendors
All smiles after a good day of sales