The City of Pines still does have its charms, urban blight and population boom notwithstanding. The enduring allure is plain and simple: there is no place like it anywhere in the Philippines. Mostly because it is weathered differently than the rest of the country; except, of course, the remote villages higher up and deeper into the mountains. At a city with no need for air conditioning or the ubiquitous electric fan the whole year round, even in the height of summer, is there a better place to seek refuge from the oppressive heat in the lowlands?
The fact that Baguio City is so much different today than when it was before the 1990 earthquake, should be no cause to consign it to the so-called dustbin of history. The country’s ‘summer capital’ is near decay, some visitors are wont to lament after revisiting the place, perhaps harking back to the time when the city smelt of pine trees and nothing else. But decay is inevitable when people become complacent, and too numerous for their own good. For one thing, Baguio City was built in 1906 to accommodate 25,000 residents, and its maximum capacity was reached in less than 50 years. According to the 2010 census, its population stands at 318,676 –almost half of it students, Baguio being a bustling university city. Couldn’t be that much different than Manila was in the 50’s and 60’s when Escolta was the model for chic and elegance, but look at the ‘noble and ever loyal city’ now.
So, yes, Baguio is still charming as the flowers that bloom wherever there is soil, and cool as the nippy air that pinches your nose even as you step out into the sunshine or gnaws at your insides rousing you from deep slumber in the middle of the night. For us lowlanders bathed in sweltering heat 24/7 most months of the year and who see mostly concrete and steel when we get out of our smothering cubicles, those are luxuries of the senses devoutly to be wished for. You set foot on red earth and take a stroll between the tall trees and you are transported in another place and time – up in rarefied air more than 5,000 feet above sea level, that is, and less than five hours drive along sparkling new highways and bucolic countryside.
And if you time your trip during the city’s renowned Flower Festival –they call it Panagbenga or the season of blossoming in Kankanaey, the language widely spoken in the Cordilleras – the plethora of sensations becomes almost overwhelming. “Let a hundred flowers bloom” would be a gross understatement, although Mao Tse Tung was not being literal when he uttered those words in another era. Thousands, nay millions, of flowers of various shapes and species – sunflowers, petunias, lilies, bougainvillea, anthuriums, hibiscus, roses, daisies, everlasting, amaranths, asters, zinnias, garden sage, rosemary, Malaysian mums, milflores, santan, gumamela, kataka-taka, name it – are on glorious display in a dazzling orgy of colors. Your jaded city slicker eyes definitely don’t see them every day.
The throngs of people that ascend all at once are an integral part of the fascinating Panagbenga experience, no matter if Session Road is five- to ten-person deep in spectators craning their necks to behold the spectacle of flower-bedecked floats parading down the street. Grandmas sitting alone in shaded park benches, babies in strollers dozing blissfully unmindful of the chaos all around, toddlers riding gleefully on the shoulders of their dads, teenagers in bonnets and scarves canoeing at Burnham Lake, families having a picnic on mats laid out on the grass, young and old posing for pictures beside antiquated aircraft at the Philippine Military Academy compound, tourists dining al fresco at Camp John Hay’s newfangled Technohub, stylish ladies in hats and sunglasses taking in all the sights and sounds – people watchers never have it so good.
Panagbenga’s history as a festival dates back to 1995, conceived by city officials as a means to lure back in droves foreign and local tourists after the devastation wrought by the Big Earthquake. For once, bureaucrats in these proactivity-challenged islands got it right. Success was just under their noses and there before their eyes, scent untrained and sight unseen, for all the world to smell and see. The Flower Festival was an instant hit, both among natives and visitors alike, there being none of its kind anywhere in the country. Today, it is the Philippines’ most popular festival, hands down, with four million or so visitors that organizers claim attended the month-long festivities this year.
Baguio City, having been created by the Americans during their occupation of the archipelago at the turn of the 20th century, had no town fiesta to celebrate or patron saint to commemorate unlike many other localities that continue to carry the traditions introduced by the Spanish colonizers. It was chartered as a city on September 1, 1909 – but it was precluded as a festival date since it falls right smack into the rainy season. The weather is ‘perfect’ in February, the project proponents believed, and the timing is impeccable. Alumni of the Philippine Military Academy hold their annual homecoming trek to the Alma Mater usually on Valentine’s Week, and the month is straddled between Christmas and Easter giving people who have the resources a reason to make the trek as well.
Thus, what was initially a ten-day celebration spanning two weekends now stretches over five full weeks with activities that include street dancing and band competitions, trade fairs and food bazaars, art exhibits and landscaping contests, pony boys’ day, fireworks displays, the whole nine yards. It climaxes with the grand parade of floral floats bearing the names of popular brands and institutions, with celebrities thrown in for good measure. And the creativity improves by leaps and bounds every time, giving the much older (since 1890) and more spectacular Rose Parade in Pasadena, California a run for its money.
There are still the pony rides you’ve always wanted to take but were too embarrassed to try, the trip to La Trinidad’s strawberry fields to gather strawberries by your own hand, the 252-step climb up Lourdes Grotto to find out if your knees will be able to endure it. There is that different angle from which to take a selfie on the promontory at Mines’ View Park, that chilly game of golf at Baguio Country Club, the luscious jars of ube jam bought directly from the Good Shepherd nuns, the picnic at a secluded spot on a hilltop at Mount Santo Tomas, the hearty conversations with friends by the fireplace or around a bonfire after pitching tent, the late afternoon boat ride at Burnham Park while eating pizza – the possibilities are truly endless.
Too, there is something about Baguio City that lures creative minds and ingenious hands to its fold. The climate is just conducive to the imagination, stoking that fire in the belly for music and poetry to write itself, painting and sculpture to come alive by itself, the soul thirsty for rejuvenation to heal itself. The city is home to a National Artist and famous painter, a sculptor, and a film maker, among others Рa cultural hotbed for artists, renowned and struggling; where romance is certainly not pass̩ and freedom of expression is at its most luxuriant.
And, yes, the pine trees in the City of Pines are alive and well despite the huge shoe box that sits on a hill where once hundreds of them used to thrive, the plants are in full flourish everywhere and all the time, the public market is brimming with fresh produce and colorful handicrafts at bargain prices, the strawberries are sweet and plentiful like cornucopia overflowing, and the atmosphere in general is in tune with nature. It is always worth going back to the Baguio City of one’s youth, when time and circumstance allow – even if only to smell the flowers.
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