My bad, all my life—and like I wasn’t born yesterday—I thought Cagayan de Oro was a province, to think I’d been there once before, a long time ago.
Memories of Cagayan de Oro, CDO as many call it, linger to this day, walking on a bridge above a thick forest of gigantic trees, eating adobo from a Tupperware on a balcony wrapped around one of those ancient trees. They called it the Canopy Walk and I’m not sure it’s the same as the Canopy Walk at Macahambus Adventure Park, a nature reserve just 20 minutes by car from the city proper. When I was there, I distinctly remember my travel companions telling me we were walking 15 meters above the ground, but the famous Sky Bridge, based on a couple of travelogues I read from 2012, seems three times higher at 45 meters. I recall looking down past my feet at the top of the trees on the Canopy Walk, but there was no Sky Bridge then, if memory serves me right. Rather than a bridge, it was wooden footpaths connecting the treetops, like the Ewok Village in Return of the Jedi. Besides, a tour guide told me on a recent trip, my second, that the Canopy Walk shut down during the pandemic and never reopened.
I was in CDO in mid-July, deciding last minute to tag along with my friends at the Philippine Travel Agencies Association (PTAA), which held an international travel expo at the Limketkai Center. It was the first ever expo of this scale that the PTAA mounted outside of National Capital Region, thanks to the visionary leadership of its president Mariegel Tankiang Manotok, its vice president for outbound Evelyn Bondagjy, and its PRO Jaison Yang.
I don’t know why I had the impression that CDO was a province and not just the capital city of Misamis Oriental, one of five provinces that make up Region 10, the others being Bukidnon, Camiguin, Misamis Occidental, and Lanao del Norte. I guess I misunderstood when, hanging onto dear life on a rubber raft bouncing over the rapids of Cagayan River the first time I went whitewater rafting, I was told that the right bank of the river going downstream was already Bukidnon. It was a thrill, as much as the raging water, to realize I was in two provinces at the same time, CDO to my left, Bukidnon to my right, although, as it turns out, one of them is just a city capital and the hub of northern Mindanao, where, along with Iligan City, it is categorized as a highly urbanized city.
It was a thrill to realize, while hanging onto dear life on a rubber raft bouncing over the rapids of Cagayan River, that I was in two provinces at the same time, Misamis Oriental to my left, Bukidnon to my right.
Equally memorable was the lunch of sinugba or grilled pork belly served to us, again in Tupperware, on the riverbank in Bukidnon. I ate it with rice using my bare fingers, even though there was neither soap nor running water with which to wash my hands. This was the first time. The second time, when I asked if lunch would be the same, our guide from Kagay Whitewater Rafting said the plan was a boodle fight, but it wasn’t ideal because flies were in season. Instead, we had our lunch, packed from a hotel, but also inihaw na baboy, at the end of the adventure on the CDO riverbank.
Based on my conversation with the locals, Cagayan de Oro is fast on the road to progress, but it’s got one foot on the breaks. Though real estate development is in boom, with many of the nation’s key players in building townships malls, and office buildings coming in, the Kagay-anons would like to keep as much of nature as possible intact, to not follow in the footsteps of its neighbors Davao City and Queen City of the South in Cebu. No wonder I mistook CDO for a province, even though I stayed in Pueblo de Oro, a 400-hectare master-planned township equipped with all the amenities of modern city living. As it did then, it still does feel like a provincia, with lots of spots quiet, save for the whisper of wind blowing through the trees, or the roar of the rapids on Cagayan River, or the squawk of sea birds on the coast of Macajalar Bay, or the sound of your own breathing when it is 11 p.m. and the city is asleep.
But what else to do in CDO? First on our agenda was a pilgrimage to the 15-meter-tall statue of the Christ Jesus on Divine Mercy Hills in El Salvador. The site includes a healing chapel amid a lush garden leading to Macajalar Bay.
Just as breathtaking is Sinulom Falls, a cascade of 28 waterfalls on Cagayan River surrounded by a thick forest cover and such other attractions as a hanging bridge, a campsite, a mountain resort replete with view decks providing breathtaking views, and the Bolao Cold Spring, as well as man-made pools, courtesy of the resort, which collect the water flowing from falls.
So heartwarming were the indigenous dances of the Higaonon, such as the binanog, which mimics the movement of a hawk, and the inamo, which imitates that of a monkey, all performed in traditional costumes as a welcome gesture to the PTAA guests during the expo opening ceremonies and also at the courtesy dinner hosted by Klarex Uy, the city mayor.
There are many other things to do in CDO and surely the most a weekend can do is give you a an inkling of what life is like in this city. But I see it more than a vacation spot or a brief respite. I see in CDO a new life, as the French poet Arthur Rimbaud saw it in Harar, Ethiopia, as the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh saw it in Arles in the South of France, or as American writer Ernest Hemingway saw it in Havana Cuba, where he lived for 20 years before moving back to the US to live out his days in Ketchum, Idaho.
Incidentally, I met up with Aimee Marcos, who is now based in CDO with her husband and son. She took me to a swanky bar called The Oak Room and there, in my Arthur Rimbaud moment, downing a shot of gin straight and neat, I thought I could have my city and live in the “provincia” too.