To Mambukal and
back – in 4 hours

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

Never mind the rains. It is summer, and you have enough time for that needed break from your everyday routine – even just to stop and linger and smell the world around you.

But we’re blessed, see, because taking that much-needed break does not just involve taking one long breath and keeping still to savor the air. You see, we can very well go out of our usual environment and change the scenery around us while we change our pace. There are plenty of summer places and summer things to do.

Shortly before the Holy Week break, I decided on a whim to go drive to Mambukal, the place of many wonderful summer memories for Negrenses, and breath new air, perhaps see if I could weave new memories.

With no planning at all, I left Bacolod at 8 a.m., with just an extra pair of shorts, shirts and towel. An hour later, I was at the entrance of this iconic summer resort, forking out my entrance fees. As we entered, I felt a certain familiarity, like I was entering home grounds. How many camping trips have I made to this place in the past? And how, in that span of time, I’ve seen the glory days of the place when the forest foliage was so thick and green, its deterioration in the next years, and then its eventual rehabilitation under Guv 319?

I went as usual to the dipping pool, where we often go since the resort was rehabilitated and took in the deliciously warm water, hot just right, so that you felt your tired nerves perking up at contact and the pores of your skin opening up, your body coming alive from weeks of slaving away to stress.

A while later, the boy in charge of the pool, switched on old cold fountains that shot and sprayed and sprinkled water at us while we were swimming and it was a multi-layered experience – while immersed in the hot waters, one was being rained with the cool bursting liquid. Nice.

Aside from the water experience, the dipping pool offered some educational show as well, courtesy of the bats that flew and flung and hanged themselves from and on the crown of trees above. It was interesting to note how they moved in numbers, and then rested, then moved again; interesting as well was how the leaves swayed here and there.

Wasn’t there a time when this place was a sad sulphur spring, with water running any which way? Wasn’t there a time when this place smelled awfully sulfuric, the mud yucky? Wasn’t there a time when the bats were hard to come by, having been driven away from unmitigated human activity?

Of course, nature had made things the way it was in Mambukal, but its story tells us that nature needs our help and cooperation as well. Those of us who grew up in Negros and have regularly visited this place, can attest to how government inaction had nearly shut down Mambukal, and how government action later, snatched it away from getting lost forever.

A little over an hour in the dipping pool and it was time for breakfast, which was available a few meters down, requiring one to stretch those legs and move those feet. A spa is open beside the pool, and should be great for relaxation, but the short walk down to the food stalls was also a nice stretching exercise.

A few feet away were the flower shops that sold the bursts of summer colors the resort has always been known for. It was just over 10 a.m., and the crowds were thickening.

We left the place soon after breakfast, and by 12 noon, were back in Bacolod and its never-ending roars of motor vehicles, but the contrast isn’t really important here. It's the realization of how near many of our summer places are, and how accessible they are even without very elaborate planning.*

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