Amazed by Aliwagwag Falls of Davao Oriental

At first, all I heard was a muted rush as I stepped down from the bus that took us into a sleepy village in the hinterlands. As I walked into the clearing, the murmuring sound of gushing water grew increasingly louder. Moments later, the roaring loudness swelled to attention-grabbing proportions. This all the more drove me to quicken my pace to see what I came for. And then, in one fell swoop, there it was—one of the most amazing wonders of nature I’ve ever seen in my whole life. 

 

For several seconds, I just stood there caught in a spell, staring for what seemed like eternity at the spectacle. Frozen. Fixated. Flabbergasted. Fascinated. So were the other excited souls who joined the trek that Sunday morning. Who wouldn’t? Right in front of us was this awesome free-flowing stairway that seemed to reach upwards into the sky. It isn’t every day that you get to see a spectacle like that.

Snapping out of my daydream, I quickly held up my camera and started shooting. My subject? The thundering maelstrom of cascading energy that is Aliwagwag Falls, dubbed as the “highest waterfalls in the Philippines” and one of the country’s most beautiful. Locked away in the lush forestlands of Cateel in Davao Oriental, it is actually made up of a series of 84 cascades located in the village of Aliwagwag, about an hour’s drive from the town center.

 


Each of Aliwagwag Falls’ spellbinding tiers have varying heights ranging from 1.83 m (6 ft) to around 33.53 m (110 ft), with an average width of about 9 meters (nearly 29.53 ft). From its summit down to the bottom, the falls has a total drop of around 338 m (1,110 ft), much taller than Makati’s Gramercy Residences (302 m), the highest skyscraper and residential building in the Philippines.
 

I’ve been wanting to see the falls a long, long time ago but time and circumstance weren’t on my side then. A few weeks ago, however, I learned that Arthur, Elmer and Edwin (a.k.a. Weng), my friends at RTours Mindanao, were organizing an invasion of sorts for the nth time to four of Cateel’s cascades, including the one in Aliwagwag. I was flushed with excitement. This is it! I’ll finally get to see the falls, I told myself.  Without much ado, I got in touch with Weng and readily signed up for the tour. 

As the much-anticipated date neared, my desire to see the cascades grew stronger by the day. And by the time all of us—a thirty-plus entourage of weekend wanderers—reached the place following an almost five-hour ride from Davao City to Cateel, my excitement, not to mention the exhilaration, to see and shoot the falls had already reached fever pitch. So strong was my excitement that it practically drove away all the anxieties I felt during the long commute.

Warning: the sojourn to Cateel may not appeal to the fainthearted. Those who’ve been there know that it’s one tough journey passing through the rough roads of Compostela Valley into the gripping gorges of Davao Oriental. There’s a whiff of danger as the vehicle negotiated through the winding and wobbling stretch of the mountainous terrain. There can be no margin for error. One wrong maneuver of the driver over the craggy path could have sent everyone tumbling down to—heaven forbid!—a fatal crash. But it was the peril and suspense that spiced up that wild ride to our destination, making the trip one of the cheap thrills I’ve ever experienced in this borrowed life. 


Indeed, the odyssey to that part of Mindanao is a fantasy fulfilled for this inveterate thrill-seeker; it was a rare chance to upsize my sense of self, to push my personal boundaries to the max. It was one exhilarating joy ride that gave me a wispy but gripping aftertaste of life on the edge as our bus snaked through the darkness of the unknown.

All the hazards of the trek, however, vanished into thin air the moment I laid eyes on the cascades. Geez, this spellbinder of a falls is a photographer’s delight! It’s truly something to die for, more spectacular than what I’ve imagined it to be, I thought as I snapped at the spectacle from my vantage point at Aliwagwag Bridge. Its towering height and unique rock formations, I supposed, could qualify the fascinating falls as our country’s next bet for the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. 

Despite its growing popularity among local tourists, especially the daring and the adventurous, the falls, however, isn’t part of the international tourist map yet. Perhaps it’s the lack of creature comforts which people usually look for in a tourist attraction. Largely unspoiled by “progress”, the area where Aliwagwag Falls is located has no pay phone, no restaurants, no souvenir shops, no accommodations. Perhaps aggravating the hesitation is the perception that foreigners still have about Mindanao; that it’s risky to go to this part of the Philippines because they’d get kidnapped, killed or what have you.

Nonetheless, I’m positive that things would change for the better soon. I’ve read somewhere that plans are afoot to develop Aliwagwag Falls and its environs as one of Davao Oriental’s tourism development areas (TDAs). If this pushes through, I can only hope that the villagers, the local tourism officials, the provincial government and other stakeholders would work together to ensure that the au naturel charms of the awesome falls are preserved to the hilt so that tourists of this generation and the next will be able to savor the no-frills, laid-back simplicity and serenity of this amazing beauty. :D

Roaming around “The Ruins” of Talisay City

There lies in one of Negros Occidental’s newly formed cities the remains of a rundown mansion owned by the heirs of one of its sugar barons, which is fast turning into a spectacular tourist magnet known as “The Ruins”. 

Built by Don Mariano Ledesma Lacson sometime in the early 1900s in memory of Maria Braga, his Portuguese wife, the century-old house—or what’s left of it—is considered by some to be the Philippines’ little version of India’s Taj Majal, which is a testament of one man’s undying love for his departed wife. 


Word has it that the mansion used to be the largest residential structure ever built at that time. It was also embellished with the finest furniture, chinaware, paintings and other works of art. Also, one of Lacson’s daughters maintained a lovely garden with a four-tiered fountain fronting the house.

All its grandeur, however, was reduced to ruins when guerilla fighters during World War II burned the mansion so that the Japanese forces could not use it as their headquarters. For three days, the fire ravaged the whole house, gutting its roof, floors and woodwork.

Even so, the structure has withstood the test of time primarily because of the huge steel bars and the A-grade mixture of concrete used when the house was built. One of Lacson’s sons was said to have supervised the construction, seeing to it that everything was done in accordance to the family’s specifications, including the A-grade concrete mixture and its pouring.

In recent years, the present owners of the estate must have realized the tourism potentials of this ancestral house in Talisay. Thus, they restored and opened it to the public, eventually transforming yesterday’s fabulous abode into today’s favorite venue for weddings, pictorials, debuts, picnics, reunions and other gatherings.

Having heard so much about this tourist attraction, my friends and I explored the renowned rubble during our recent visit to Bacolod. From Silay City, we traveled southward to the neighboring city of Talisay where the ruins are located.

A sucarcane plantation in Talisay

There are two routes that tourists can take to reach the place. One is thru a potholed macadam road passing through a sugarcane plantation in Talisay and another via a middle-class subdivision somewhere in Bacolod.

Our hosts were not very familiar with the streets in Talisay so we ended up taking the rough road (that’s less traveled, I supposed) all the way to the mansion. It was a bumpy drive but we enjoyed that helluva joyride just the same. 

On the way to our destination, we chanced upon a group of sugarcane plantation workers known as sakadas who were busy harvesting in the field. We stopped to ask one of them for directions to the ruined mansion. After giving us the route, the fellow and his colleagues willingly obliged when we requested them to pose for us. Wasting no time, we took advantage of that rare countryside scenery and kept on clicking our shutter buttons.

When the plantation photo op was over, we drove some more before we finally saw what we came for. From a distance, the ruins of Lacson’s mansion looked like the scaffolding of an unfinished house. At close range, however, it seemed like the refurbished ground zero of some demolished structure.


After paying the entrance fees, we began exploring the place. On the remaining walls, I noticed several photographs and other memorabilia, explaining the Lacson family as well as the house’s rich history. Inside, a number of tourists were busy milling around the old mansion that reeked of nostalgia, mystery and intrigue.  

Outside, we noticed the sprawling garden with a large fountain to boot and headed towards it. I wondered if this was an original structure or just a replica. Many people were around that time, taking snaps of themselves with the garden and fountain as background so we patiently waited for all of them to leave before we started taking our shots.

It is said that the magnificence of the ruins come into full view during late afternoons when the rays of the sun hit the hollow frames of the structure, turning its pale hues into golden yellow. Taking our refreshments, we patiently played the waiting game just to capture the seared spectacle at its best. And when the shooting began, we really had a blast.

Whether one is a tyro or a pro, the ruins of the Lacson mansion are undoubtedly a photographer’s delight. I just wished we had more time to snap at the structure at different times of the day, perhaps from sunup to sundown. Oh, well, I guess a second coming’s in the offing.  :D