By Reyshimar Arguelles
It only took four hours to reach the town of Kalibo. We had dodged buses, pickup trucks, and other creatures of the road when we neared the town’s border. The landscape gradually turned festive as we began hearing drum beats and deep heart-pounding disco bass emanating from gigantic speakers.
It was the Ati-atihan season, and I was glad I got to experience it for the first time — and in one piece. When traveling, the worst place to be is either at the front passenger seat of a van or at the back of a Rusi driven by a speed junkie like V. For the latter case, the best you can do is to grip the sides of the secondary seat as V negotiates high-risk curves; that while you are hoping your body doesn’t get mangled too much so your corpse can still experience a decent open-casket funeral.
Was I too paranoid? Yes, but I had forgotten about the idea of dying in a freak accident when we finally entered Kalibo. It was my first time there. I was fascinated by its simplicity, which also describes other towns in the Island of Panay. But Kalibo is a different character all on its own — but what do I know? I was no travel blogger writing “authentic content”. I was there for the sake of drinking lots of booze and realizing my dream to be the Ilonggo version of Kerouac.
What else can I say apart from the fact that the town deserves a conversion to a full-fledged city. Then again, it doesn’t matter because the town itself can still get by with the charm it has cultivated ever since the tourism boom of the late 90s or way before Boracay became an important attraction. But we were in town solely for Ati-atihan and for the raucous traditions it is known for.
After passing several checkpoints manned by police officers who gave me a stern look because I had wrapped a scarf around my head, we stopped over at a donut store where we had coffee. We then headed to the house of V’s girlfriend whose mother — an amiable woman who grew up in Santa Barbara — greeted us with hefty servings of sweet chorizo for dinner.
Exhaustion had set in and we called it a night. I slept in a vacant room with V, who told me that another high school friend, F, would be arriving the next day with F’s girlfriend. I was to be the fifth wheel in yet another weird adventure.
We met F and his girlfriend the next day while we were taking photos of the Ati-atihan tribes. For lunch, V’s girlfriend led us to a pizza parlor near the provincial capitol where, as any fifth wheel would do, I served as the professional photographer of the happy couples. I thought this an insane injustice on my part.
We headed downtown for the traditional sadsad. It was late in the afternoon when the streets were packed with different sorts of characters. There were cosplayers, bros wearing tank tops and Nile trainers, conyo teens wearing face paint like they were in Coachella, and old-timers sitting on the sides drinking Pilsen and talking about how things were amidst nauseating EDM beats and the frenzied ruckus of today’s narcissistic youth.
Our group was absorbed by a crowd of drummers and devotees carrying statues of the Santo Niño. Before long, someone handed me a can of Red Horse. It wasn’t the last one I consumed that day, as we marched from street to street, with people in balconies watching over us as they raised plastic cups of beer. Evening came and I saw revelers drinking beer from an IV pole, grinding their butts at each other, and creating all sorts of madness that only added to my delirium.
Sure enough, our Ati-atihan excursion did not stop in the middle of that mass of drunken humanity. Looking back at these moments now makes me want to go back in time and slap my younger self for being involved in such affairs. But you can’t take back everything, especially if it reminds you the reason you wanted to be better.
