BROWNSVILLE OBSERVER TAKES A MORNING WALK IN BUGO, PHILIPPINES

My gracious hostess in Bugo, Philippines, Ana Adiong, woke me at 7 AM:  "Are you ready for a walk?" she asked.

"First, drink your coffee and then we will walk up to the mountain," Ana added.

We exited the Villa Trinitas Subdivision, finding the new concrete diversion road from Tagoloan to Alae with a bridge crossing a stream of clear water coming down from the mountains around Bugo.  Locals also made a makeshift wooden bridge we found occupied by two toddlers.

Motorscooters whizzed by, most carrying three or four passengers; a proud father with three neatly dressed children, four older people, then a bald man smoking a cigarette with a guy behind him with child on his shoulders.

After posing for pics, the young father walks down the rocky embankment and across the river to his home still carrying his kid on his shoulders.

We passed a neighborhood sari sari store, where locals buy most everything, from a 100 peso "load" for their phone or laptop to a bottle or two of San Miguel Beer.  

Almost everyone smiled with a "good morning!" One small group held up a quart of San Miguel Beer, offering me a drink.  When I told them I had a cold quart waiting for me back at the house, you could hear the laughter echoing in the trees. 

A woman with a flower garden insisted that I be in the picture, gesturing for me to come up into her sloping yard.

Del Monte is the primary employer here with a cannery on the water.  We walked through the company's banana and papaya orchards.  

Proud Owner of Sari Sari Store.  Notice the Neatly Stacked
Cooking Wood

(All pics for this article by Ana Adiong)