Tracing a hero’s path to martyrdom is no walk in the park, we participants in this secular pilgrimage will find out as soon as we brave waking up extra-early to meet our companions from Malolos and Manila.
After a quick breakfast and a just-as-quick program, we take the vehicle bound for Gregorio del Pilar town in far-flung Ilocos Sur. Excluding the pit stops, that’s a good four hours on the road and everything that means: mad rush and getting stuck in the middle of nowhere, heat and cold, thirst and hunger, the cruel call of nature, and the tedium of the long haul, not to mention other possible risks.
First stop: Feria de Candon
From Bayambang, our first major stop is Candon City where, it so happens, a trade fair is ongoing as part of the grand opening of the Candon City Trade Center, a handsome infrastructure. We are struck by pangs of envy. The mayor, the youngish Dr. Ericson Singson, fetes us to a filling lunch and then talks about the significance of Candon in the trek. Candon is an inevitable stop, we learn from him, because it has long been a place of brisk business and an unavoidable portal to the towns further up north. The young Gen. Gregorio ‘Goyo’ del Pilar must have stopped here for some provisions.
We roam around the trade center and find a cornucopia of pleasant surprises on sale. One espies traditional Igorot smoked pork called etag and new-fangled products like the flavored ‘chichapops,’ corn ears cooked in a new style – not exactly popcorn but not exactly like Paoay’s chichacorn either. There is basi and tapey rice wines, chilli flakes, even masa podrida cookies, apart from the usual Ilocano fare of sukang Iluko, inabel, calamay, binubudan, cigars, nilupak, and so on. But Ilocano garlic is visibly absent.
Suddenly, Salcedo
An hour more and we reach Salcedo, the place where Goyo’s bones had been reportedly interred before they were sent home to Bulacan, his birthplace. Stopping by his monument at the town square proves exhausting due to the dizzying 2:00 pm sun despite the generous cover of acacia trees. Unlike in Candon, the mayor here, Leopoldo Gironella, is absent because, as it turns out, he is at the Feria de Candon waiting for our party.
The town’s walking historian, Sangguniang Bayan member Erlinda Figueroa, a grand matriarchal figure, reads to us a heartfelt Ilocano poem in Goyo’s honor and ends in a pitiful coughing fit. The language barrier is no doubt a hindrance but we feel her and the passages she conveys.
Bong Enriquez, grandson of Goyo’s aide-de-camp, Vicente Enriquez, stands up to share some first-hand accounts of his lolo about his former boss Goyo and the time gone by. A rather revelatory sharing. Goyo's granddaughter, Janice Villarosa, gets busy taking footage of the proceedings.
And now the really hard part. We leave our bus and van and take three jeepneys to Concepcion town, as the road going there is quite a challenge, to put it mildly. A number of the young ones take the jeep ‘topload’ style – the better to enjoy the wild scenery along the way, they say.
‘Navigate,’ or ‘negotiate,’ is maybe the right word to use as our hired men on the wheel take us up and down the valley of boulders and rivulets. The view is exhilarating, though edged with fear born of paranoia.
GDP at last
Concepcion, we are informed, has been renamed Gregorio del Pilar town – GDP, for short – of course, in honor of the young general. We arrive in GDP and see its folks getting busy at nightfall. It’s their town fiesta, it turns out, which had been moved to December 2 to coincide with Goyo’s date with destiny. The historic name switch from its religious Spanish roots to a postcolonial preference won’t escape the observant eye.
Here, we are served a late dinner of an intriguing variety of native rice, organic pork and homegrown vegetables. The rooms of the GDP Municipal Hall have been converted into sleeping quarters for us visitors. But sleep won’t be an option just as yet, as there is the Cultural Night to witness in which the mayor himself, Henry Gallardo, presides over.
The inhabitants here, we find out, are a quaint mix of Igorot, or to be more accurate, Kankana-ey, and Ilocano ancestry, and the culture bears this out. Kimona is worn on top by women and paired off with the Igorot tapis in distinctive red-white-and-black ikat weave. We’ve never seen anything quite like it before, not even in Baguio. They call themselves Bag-o, we learn from our leader, Mr. Isagani Giron of Bulacan Salinlahi, the historical interest group he heads as Malolos historian and organizer of this tour. Unlike the pure Igorots who resemble the Chinese but with a sturdy body and short stature, the Bag-os or Bagos are fair- to brown-complexioned with a relatively slender build.
The communal dancing dazzles with a variety of interpretations; the cadence hypnotic, sending our heads bobbing.
Meanwhile, the moon rises over fog-kissed peaks, and the rice terraces beckon the curious to come visit up close. We hear about a hotspring worth visiting nearby as well, and we retire for the night dead-tired but excited to rise for the morrow.
The actual trek
“How did the American soldiers manage to trace Goyo despite the formidable ruggedness of the terrain?”
"From what wellspring did Goyo source his sense of patriotism? Or did he perhaps have some other, more personal agenda?"
We confront hard questions we never ever expected to have as we amble up the grassy footpaths carved by explorers before us.
The thrills and travails of this part of our journey are perhaps best kept as a fiercely guarded secret to protect the would-be ‘pilgrims’ from the curse of too much information in this day and age of intrusive social media and viral memes. Suffice it to say that it is flavored with Good Friday stuff that are good for the soul in both the spiritual and secular senses. But one thing we can divulge freely is that Byaheng Tirad Pass is only for the daring and the brave.
A much-welcome side trip to this long journey is a trip to Vigan City, but it feels like an afterthought, with all of the things above considered.
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