Spiritually nourishing trip to Jerusalem

The list of travel shows in local TV history will always remain short. Maybe it is because these types of programs are expensive to produce and difficult to mount.

But Travel Time will always be known not only for pioneering in this field, but also for its excellent writing and impeccable production quality. (Susan Calo-Medina’s second issue of Travel Time, the Magazine, incidentally, is already out.)

Balikbayan will also be memorable if only for the humor and fine hosting skills of Drew Arellano.

There was also a period when I never missed Trip na Trip because Kat de Castro and her gang showed us how to have fun. However, I stopped watching when they turned it into a game (?) show where the hosts had to do challenges. Whatever history or splendor their destination offered was lost in all those trivia. Besides, it was difficult to monitor given its erratic schedule on ABS-CBN.

But I’m back to being a viewer again after one Friday I caught their trip to Jerusalem. I have now idea how new or how old that episode was, but it got me glued to Trip na Trip again.

The concept was for Israeli host Uma Khouni to tour Kat de Castro around Jerusalem. That was basically the idea in Balikbayan. Bicolano JC de Vera, for instance, gave Drew Arellano a tour of Albay province in one Bicol episode. Other celebrities did the same. They played guide to the host in their respective hometowns.

The show’s staff once asked me to bring them to Bulacan, but I didn’t think I had the authority to do that since I only spent weekends there and stayed mostly in my spinster aunts’ store for free candies and sodas. By nightfall, we were headed back to Manila. I haven’t been there for the longest time and even I would need a guide to show me around.

But going back to Trip na Trip’s Jerusalem episode, it got an unexpected twist when it was discovered that it was Israeli native Uma who needed to fly there to know more about his country’s ancient heritage.

Apparently, Uma had become so Pinoy that like most other Filipinos who had visited every Disneyland all over the world and had yet to see the famed Banaue Rice Terraces. I haven’t. Neither have I been to Boracay.

 In due fairness to Uma, he admitted that he took those sites in the Holy Land for granted — maybe because, like most other Pinoys, we know that those are just there and there’s no hurry to visit those famed landmarks.

With the help of Kat, Uma learned a lot about his country. He is Moslem and Kat, who is Catholic, helped him and the audiences know more regarding the place. As a viewer who had never been to the Holy Land, I discovered that Jerusalem is the center for at least three religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Kat — via voice-over — also reminded those who had forgotten their history lessons that though Jerusalem is an ancient place, the Israel of today is relatively young, having become a nation only in 1948. If she didn’t go into details anymore, I forgive her since that will take long. And they had so many places of interest in Jerusalem to feature.

One of the well-appointed 261 rooms

One was the Wailing Wall that even Barrack Obama visited before he became President of the United States. (They had a picture of that to show.)

And then there was the place where Jesus Christ’s lifeless body (right after the Crucifixion) was prepared for burial — though on the third day He rose again, as we say in our prayers. Even the location where the Blessed Mother (with Baby Jesus in Her womb) is believed to have visited St. Elizabeth, a very much older cousin, then also heavy with child, who later would be born and grow up to be St. John the Baptist.

Kat’s spiels were all said with conviction because it is obvious that she knows her Catholic Church doctrines and wasn’t simply fed with a last-minute scribbled script by the show’s writer.

What I like best about what she said was her advice to viewers that if they can already afford it, go visit Jerusalem this early and not wait till their bones are already brittle and no longer fit for traveling.

Her Jerusalem experience, according to her, gave her a deep sense of spirituality. Friends who had been to the Holy Land also said the same thing. Although God is everywhere, you feel even closer to Him when you are in Jerusalem, so said everyone I know who had been there.

Trip na Trip’s Jerusalem was done in two parts. Unfortunately, I never caught the second installment. But I was already happy with the first one that I found so informative, educational and entertaining — and yet spiritually nourishing, especially in this season of Lent.