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Monday, April 21, 2003
San Francisco: A tour destination in the making
By KAREN M. FLORES
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
NEXT year, San Francisco town in Camotes Island may rival Bantayan in Holy Week offerings for tourists.
Municipal and barangay officials were rushing last week the completion of a life-size Via Crucis for their Kalbaryo, while also improving roads in anticipation of visitors to the place.
With not enough time, though, San Francisco would have to wait till next year to make itself known as a place to be during the Holy Week.
The town has what it takes to be a tourist destination.
The only problem, said some Municipal Hall personnel, is the lack of publicity to promote what the town has to offer.
Because of this lack of publicity, San Francisco’s Holy Week celebration and other tourist attractions are only able to draw mostly Camotes locals. There are occasional foreign tourists, but not as many as the town wishes to host.
What tourist come-ons San Francisco offers always get compared with their more famous counterparts in Bantayan. San Francisco knows it needs to work hard.
In Barangay Sonog, the Municipality has spent P300,000 to rehabilitate 25-year-old statues of Jesus, Mary, Veronica, Roman guards and other characters in the passion narratives.
It’s like Cebu City’s Celestial Gardens, said Sonog Barangay Captain Charlito Amancio.
Amancio is a Seventh-Day Adventist. But he does not mind working on a project that is not in his religion.
“Okay ra na. Isip punoan sa barangay, ako ning katungdanan. Serbisyo man sab ni,” he told Sun.Star, who visited the town last week. (I don’t mind it because this is part of my job as head of the barangay.)
The Municipal Government had also planned an Easter egg hunt to cap last week’s Holy Week celebrations.
As of Holy Monday, however, painters and sculptors were still fixing the noses and hands of the statues, while Municipal Hall personnel were still arranging the Easter egg hunt.
Other spots that should attract tourists to the town all year round have gained few visitors too.
Eight kilometers long and three kilometers wide, Lake Danao has consistently made it to the top three list in the Clean and Green competition for inland bodies of water.
Some locals believe Lake Danao is more deserving of the top prize, only that it has not been promoted well.
Lake Danao is also famous for the soli-soli grass, another source of pride for San Francisco residents.
The grass is used to make bags, hats, mats and other products. In the last two years, it has been made the center of a street dancing in town, the Soli-soli Festival (see separate story).
The making of bags and mats out of soli-soli grass has remained a cottage industry, even if its products are already very expensive when sold in posh hotels in Cebu City.
San Francisco residents hope their Kalbaryo next year and the Soli-soli Festival will be popular enough to attract more visitors to their island municipality. |
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