cagayan de oro, the city of golden friendship

several posts ago, i made a resolution to recall the places that i had been and come up with decent narratives that could help me in the future when i would only remember the name of the place and grievously, nothing else.

does anyone in the world also share the same problem with me? and if you do one way or another, i can make use a bit of tea and sympathy. thank you.

now let's move on to a more cheerful part! cagayan de oro, the city of golden friendship!

The golden sun in the city of golden friendship!

this would be a trip down memory lane, retracing my memories 4 years ago. oh dear heavens help me.

before i dig and pull these locked up memories into the surface, here are some facts about cagayan de oro. cagayan de oro is the capital city of misamis oriental of northern mindanao and the city serves as the prime business port of entry as it sits along the rim of the macajalar bay which is connected to the bohol sea towards visayas.

long before the onset of budget airlines and unbelievable seat promos, one has to travel overnight on a boat from cebu city to cdo. i think most people still do up to now since traveling overnight can maximize your time and there are still a lot of people who don't have access to the internet for grabbing those volatile seat sales from airphil express and cebu pacific, the two budget airlines that ply the cebu to cdo route.

The "gusgusin" me on an economy bunk of our ship to CDO

in 2008, i was already enslaved in the corporate world and one thing i could remember was the great feeling of having to go out from the office while the late afternoon sun was still gleaming on my face. i started my day in the office at a groggy hour of 7AM so that i could go out at 4PM. our boat was scheduled to depart at 8PM.

for the love of me, i can't remember which shipping line we were on! but i'm more inclined to cebu ferries over transasia. the timestamps of my pictures remind me that we left cebu on march 19, 2008, a wednesday and we arrived in cdo the following morning.

i actually confirmed to my friends that i was going at the last minute because i need to ingeniously sway my parents to let me wander during the holy week when i would normally go home. having identified our departure date, it reminds me that i had a send off dinner with my family because it was my sister's birthday. even if my conscience was trying to step in with my selfish endeavor, i reluctantly bade my family goodbye and rushed to the pier to meet up with my friends. this i'm not so sure how i went to the pier or me and my friends just met up and headed to the pier together. i seriously have no idea! all i'm sure was we got on a boat! haha

A father and daughter (I presumed) Badjaos at the CDO port

it was an uneventful journey to cdo and thank God it was so. the weather cooperated and my friends and i still managed to get some sleep along the way. our boat was awfully slow that the cdo's dock promisingly beckoned us from afar but it took us hours before our boat was finally able to anchor! i never thought the phrase "so near yet so far" could actually be applicable to real life circumstances.

at long last when our boat came to a steady halt, we were welcomed by the badjaos, eagerly waiting for the passengers to throw coins at them. having to spend all their life in the water, they are really good swimmers that they can dive to catch the coins that missed to land on their bancas. the water at the cdo port looked cleaner because it had the sea green hue and i really hope it is still up to this day.

On our way to the white water rafting's jump off

my friend, fame on the leftmost was already in cdo and together with her cousins, they met the trio of us at the pier. kate is on the rightmost of the photo who admirably could still afford to flash a smile to the camera even if we just disembarked from a very long and slow journey.

true to cdo's slogan, city of golden friendship, fame's family was extra welcoming that we didn't have to worry on our transportation around cdo since we were able to squeeze ourselves into her aunt's van.

it was the holy week so most of the establishments in cdo were closed at that time and fame's cousins were telling us that we should have picked different dates for us to fully experience what cdo had to offer. but since we were already there, we had no choice but to make most of our time.

in a spur of the moment, we suggested white water rafting even if we never made any booking beforehand.

CDO's white water rafting:  jump off point for beginners

and here's freedom on the rightmost of our courtesy picture before we started our beginner's trail on cdo's rapids. i was so totally off with our choreography that my paddle was towards the ground and for whatever was wrong with me, i wore my helmet incorrectly! it must be the slow boat or i believe we missed our breakfast that morning.

it was a very impromptu decision that we even had to fetch our guide from his house and because it was last minute, he wasn't able to secure a helmet. the guides on the other rafts even admonished him why he wasn't wearing one. we were sorry for that and we were glad that nothing untoward incident happened all throughout our mini adventure.

our guide was very entertaining and he had our full attention because of the way he described each rapid with a catchy name. i can remember a rapid named as washing machine and another one as something to do with snakes because a lot of snakes were frequently seen on the cliffs near the rapid. to our relief, we hadn't seen any.

once again, i had no idea what came over me in this picture. this is the rock towards the end of our rafting experience and as a "graduation" rite, one has to jump from this rock in order to complete his achievement. we were scaredy cats that none of us jumped. but don't judge us okay? we were equally happy on top of this rock.

even though we were stoked with the white water rafting, our hunger got the better of us. see our weary heads leaning on our arms? yet we still could spare our smiles to the camera! well, who wouldn't?

this is a post filled with i can't remember and i'm not sure. adding to that, i can't remember the name of this restaurant. it was i think a place that specializes grilled chicken.

People climbing up for the stations of the cross

we did not stay in cdo city but we stayed in the town near it. our streak of free things included our accommodation which was the house of fame's aunt.

we rose early the following morning to join her aunt for the stations of the cross and it was my first time to experience it. the hill was not really difficult to scale but the throngs of people made it a challenge and one had to be very careful every step of the way.

it was a breathtaking view to behold when we finally made it to the top. although we might not have listened intently to the prayers, the feeling of peace out from our little sacrifice was a pure bliss.

The rising sun for a brand new day!

thank you cdo for this experience! i hope that you will be fully back on your feet very soon, after typhoon sendong. my prayers are with you. :)

o-O