A Holy Week vacation I can never forget

This is that time of the year when the temperature sizzles that one thinks of the great wide open spaces out there where cool breezes blow, and sand, surf, sea and sun meet. That is why city folk flee the concrete jungle and stampede to the provinces. I am sure many have their favorite vacation spots. I have one, too, but it is not a resort, has no air-conditioned rooms, and has no chef to concoct mouth-watering food. It was only a nipa house in a small barrio in the small municipality of Tubao, La Union.

My classmate at the University of Santo Tomas, Paul Cardenas, invited me and my pregnant wife and my yearling daughter, to spend Holy Week there. Not having anywhere to go, I accepted.

We took the train from Tutuban to San Fernando, La Union, then a caretela to barrio Amalapay in Tubao. We stopped in the middle of nowhere.  I could see no house, only low hillocks and fields full of tobacco plants waving their broad leaves.

We took our luggage from the  caretela  and started to walk toward one hillock. At the crest of the hillock, Paul bellowed, calling out the names of his wife and children.

For a while, nothing happened and we continued walking. Then from the crest of the second, lower hillock, there burst out a group of women and children, all shouting excitedly and waving their arms at us. They were followed by two dogs barking furiously.

When our two groups met, we hugged one another lovingly. Paul’s wife, Auring, introduced us to her mother-in-law. The children gathered around their father and my year-and-a-half-old daughter. The dogs continued with their excited barking.

We climbed up the second hillock, and at the top, we saw the nipa hut. It was nestled comfortably in a hollow. There was a big tamarind tree beside it and a swing swung from one of its branches. Chickens and their chicks scratched about in the yard. A nanny goat was tethered on a grassy patch and two kids nursed at her teats. Caimito trees surrounded the whole yard.

When we reached the yard, the children invited my daughter to try the swing, but she was more interested in the chicks. They gave her some palay and she held out her hand to the chicks. They quickly gathered around her and pecked at the palay in her hands and brought giggles out of her.

We had lunch of  dinengdeng  and a salad of ferns mixed with the petals of blossoms from a tree whose name I have forgotten.

The afternoon was spent swapping stories while the children took turns at the swing.  The tamarind tree was heavy with ripe fruit and one of Paul’s boys climbed it and shook the branches. The fruits came tumbling down and the children had a merry time picking them up and eating them.

That evening, after supper, when we were getting ready to go to sleep, there was the barking of the dogs, then we heard the shuffle of feet outside and the strums of a guitar. It was the custom in Philippine barrios to serenade a visiting lass, especially from the city.

There were seven of them. They politely introduced themselves to Paul’s mother and told her they were there to serenade my wife.

She laughed. “She’s already married,” she said. “In fact, she is pregnant with her second child. And that’s her firstborn and that’s her husband,” pointing to my daughter and me.

“It doesn’t matter,” they said, and asked my permission for them to serenade my wife.

I gave it and they sang several songs and then asked my wife to sing in return. It so

happened that my wife was the vocalist of an orchestra, a winner in amateur singing contests, and had composed and written songs for recording companies. So there was a long concert until the wee hours of the night in that little barrio, until the serenaders ran out of songs and thanked us all and said goodbye and then walked off into the night.

We could tell where they were by the barking of the dogs in the villages that they passed. Finally, the barkings grew fainter and finally stopped.

The next day, Paul invited me to go to a sandbar not far from Amalapay. It was

connected to the mainland during low tide but became an island during high tide.

We arrived there by midmorning. The sandbar was lined with coconut trees; under them were fishermen’s huts.

We took off our shirts and immediately dove into the surf. Afterwards, Paul asked one of the fishermen to climb a coconut tree and bring down some nuts. The coconut water tasted a little salty.

Afterwards, we lay down on the beach talking and watching the sun sail slowly to the west. Lulled by the cool breeze, the lapping of the waves on the sand, and the swishing of palm fronds overhead, we fell asleep.

We were woken up by the waves lapping at our feet. The tide was coming in. We moved higher up the beach and went back to sleep.

When we woke up again, the sun had set and the moon had come out. Out in the distance, we could see the bobbing lights of the fishermen in their small boats. The high tide was now in full force. We were cut off from the mainland.

We spent the night on the beach, now and then waking up to see the bobbing lights of the fishermen out at sea.

In the morning, we bought some of the fish the fishermen had brought in. We broiled them over hot coals, together with some eggplants and tomatoes. Eaten with hot steaming rice and strong newly-brewed coffee, it was one of the finest breakfasts I had ever had. Just the aroma of the coffee combined with the smell of the roasting fish, and the smell of the steaming rice, keeps me thinking of that interlude again and again.

By midmorning, the tide had gone out and we could walk across the sandbar back to the mainland.

That was a Holy Week vacation I will never forget.