Last weekend, I and two other professors of architectural history at the University of the Philippines College of Architecture, shepherded by the Artwheel Company, took a bunch of rambunctious students of design up to the Cagayan Valley.
Leaving Manila and heading into the boonies is very much like time travel. The further you get away from the Philippines’ primal city, Manila, the farther back in time you seem to travel – which seems to be a reflection of the lop-sidedness of our economic and physical development as a country. Skyscrapers, cars, concrete, billboards and flyovers give way to rice fields, rural homes, carabaos and B-meg signs. Endless urban sprawl after the first hundred kilometers gives way to endless mountains and green (though we understand that not all that green is safe or environmentally sound anymore).
I was the first-timer in the group. Professor Rene Luis Mata, an architectural conservation expert, and Professor Emilio Ozaeta, an architectural historian, were the old hands at this once-a-semester field trip. The program of bringing architectural students to all compass points in the country has been going on for over five years with trips to Sagada, Laguna, Bicol and Cagayan being regular and popular options.
Artwheel, led by the ebullient Tracy Santiago and her energizer-fueled assistant, Vincent Pilien, has been organizing these architectural and heritage tours since 1995. They have run tours for students from FEU, La Salle, UST, San Beda, College of St. Benilde, and UP (Diliman and Los Baños). Tracy started as a researcher for historian Ricky Jose and ended up organizing these tours for everyone else whom she figured would enjoy discovering their own rich Filipino culture. It turns out that thousands were interested, along with dozens of educational institutions.
We left on Friday night last week just as the weather cleared. We hoped for blue skies and nine hours and two rest stops later we got it while having a hearty breakfast at Cauayan City, Isabela’s best watering hole, the Jambalaya Restaurant, owned by the hospitable Mr. King Sin. Despite the typhoon being gone, it seemed like one passed over the breakfast table as we professors made the mistake of letting our teenaged students have first go at the longsi and tapsi on offer. As it turned out, we needed as much fuel as we could for the next two days of bell-tower climbing, cave-spelunking and heritage hunting.
Tracy and Vince brought us to the Tumauini Church not far from Cauayan. This was our first glimpse of heritage church architecture and we were not disappointed. The church’s brick façade was beautiful and its tower a fantasy in the round that looked like a multi-tiered wedding cake.
Next on the tour was a visit to the San Pablo Ruins on our scenic route up to Tuguegarao, our home base. Not all church architecture in the region has survived the last few centuries. The church at San Pablo, Isabela is a case in point, but nevertheless the structure, because of a growing awareness of the importance of heritage, has been conserved. We climbed the bell tower and saw firsthand what centuries of townspeople could see – miles of verdant Isabela countryside. Churches were meant to mark the towns and serve to orient travelers as well as pilgrims.
By noon, we had to check in at our hotel in Tuguegarao and feast on a hot bowl of toppings for lunch. Then after a quick shower, it was off to more churches and a brick horno, or oven. We reached the Iguig Church first, noted for being the only Philippine church with flying buttresses, those arched supports which were normally seen in gothic churches not Philippine earthquake-baroque churches. Iguig is also noted for the life-size way of the cross that surrounds the picturesque church. My opinion – the statues (a DOT project) just marred the landscape and would have been better appreciated in their traditional form – as paintings or relief on the walls of our heritage churches.
Next on the agenda were the Alcala and Lal-lo churches, both wonderful in their brick façade detailing and again their bell towers (my legs were beginning to cramp by this time, but this just reminded me that I should get back in shape – my boyish charm has stood me well for years but now my middle-aged body is starting to cramp my style). On the way to the next church, we stopped to buy packets of Alcala’s famous milk candies.
From there we visited a quaint little church, partially in ruins but still being used – the Nassiping ruins. The local townspeople have been trying hard to find funds to rebuild and conserve their beautiful church.
Finally, we headed for Camalaniugan to see the Philippine’s oldest church bell and to look at a remnant of our old brick industry – an oven. Only the old bell was left intact as the church was rebuilt in modern concrete, though faced with brick. The oven was an amazing site to those used only to pizza ovens or barbeques. This one, like most brick ovens of the 18th and 19th century, was over two storeys high and had space large enough to allow a man on a carabao inside. Brick making was a serious undertaking then and produced tons of material used for church and house building in the north. Why did we stop using the environmentally-friendly brick?