Touring Negros - Bais City

Monday, February 1st;

This week we decided to tour the island of Negros.

Monday morning we got up, had a big breakfast of pancakes, bacon, mango and finished off with hot coffee just in case we did not find a good restaurant in time for lunch!

Gino and his tricycle (motorbike and side cart) had been hired to take the cement block maker into town for repairs. He came as planned and the fellows loaded the heavy machinery onto his cart. There was some concern about it carrying the heavy load out the very rough road to the highway. But Gino knows his machine and it was loaded efficiently and went on is way with no difficulty.

We packed up and headed out as planned. The first part of the route was over the familiar road to Don Salvadore Benedicto. From that high point it was steadily up even further before finally crossing the range and down the other side.

Our first stop was Waddy’s Place. A new hotel and restaurant high on the hill looking down the valley to San Carlos and the sea with the island of Cebu in the distance. We stopped out of curiosity. We like examining interesting hotels for future reference and it was very, very hot so a cold drink was in order.

The rooms are very nice with two queen sized beds suitable for a maximum of 4 people. The bathroom was enormous. When we went out on the deck, the view was breath taking. All this for 900 Pesos ($18.00 CAD) per night. The restaurant and gardens were lovely. We enjoyed our cold drinks and carried on.

We wound down and down and down to the town of San Carlos. This was to be our lunch stop because we heard there was a restaurant owned by an American with real hamburgers!!! We found it on the main street - it is rather hard to miss - Eva’s Burgers and Beer. Besides burgers they serve the best Mexican food around. The owner was originally from California. He makes quarterly trips to the US to bring in much of the specialty food. The rest he gets locally from Cebu or when necessary from Bacolod. He has certainly been very selective in his sources. It was a very good lunch. His personality made it fun. He has great stories to tell and obviously enjoys talking to the customers.

He told us of driving up over the mountain to Bacolod on a regular basis. His vehicle is very recognizable and fully loaded he drives very slowly up the hills to Don Salvador Benedicto and beyond. So slowly the children walk along side and talk to him. One day the colorful vehicle broke down up in NPA territory. The children all came running to talk to their friend. One little girl went off, coming back leading her father by the hand. He carried an automatic weapon over his shoulder and walked down to the stranded vehicle. Our host was very nervous! The man asked him what the problem was and then went back the way he had come. Soon he returned with another man. They crawled under the van and worked on it for a short while. Like rural people everywhere they seem to have an built in ability to fix anything with baling wire and chewing gum. When the van was operational, our host asked what could he pay for the repair. The men conferred and decided 30 Pesos was fair ($0.60 CAD). Before he left the armed man came to the window and shook our host’s hand thanking him for being so kind, talking to his children as he traveled and driving them home on rainy days.

We sat and enjoyed our surroundings for longer than expected and we had a longer drive than we had calculated to reach our final destination. Now we had to make time.

We left Negros Occidental and entered Negros Oriental. We did notice a difference. We were now on the far side of Kanlaon and the mountains. The land slopes more gently to the sea. There are beautiful beaches and mangroves. There are more big houses but even the small land holdings are tidier than on the west coast. The roads are in better repair as well. This may be because the main crop is rice and not sugar cane - though cane is still present. The big cane trucks do chew up a road. We saw rail lines and small cane trains where cane was more prevalent.

The vehicles on the road are different. There are almost no Jeepneys. Instead the “tricycles” are much bigger with parts of cars as the superstructure. We assume it is for protection as it rains more here. It does make them more difficult to pass in heavy traffic.

Our goal for the day was La Planta, a historic old hotel in Bais City. We made it with lots of time to spare before sunset. Those who wanted to siesta did. Riza and I chose to swim in the beautiful pool before dinner.

The hotel is owned by one of the “old” families of Negros. The dining room is lined with family pictures and events of the past. The heyday of this place seemed to be the 1950’s or 60’s.
The gardens were lovely, with many variety of palms and fruit trees. The buildings are still beautiful though they are not kept up to the standard of days gone by. Our venetian blinds were broken and appeared to have been that way for some time. Just little things. On the whole it was very comfortable and clean for a modest price - 1500 Pesos ($30.00 CAD). Being in town was much noisier than Calibago - we had the sounds of motorcycles on the street and goats in the next garden. Not your usual city sound!