PORO is the only island in the Camotes group with two towns straddling it: Poro and Tudela (the latter was the barangay that broke away to become a town). Pacijan island only has San Francisco town (with Tulang islet attached to it) while Ponson island only has Pilar town. Poro is the birthplace of my mother while Tudela was the birthplace of my late father.
An eight-kilometer stretch of coastal road, concreted when Emilio Osmeña was the governor, connects the Tudela town center to the Poro town center. Beyond that road looms the island’s mountains, or should we say high hills.
When I went to Tudela in the old days (that was in the seventies), I waited for the boat from Cebu that docked at the wharf in Poro to move on to the pier in Tudela after unloading passengers and cargo.
Motorcycles-for-hire met passengers in Poro to ferry them to either the interior of Poro or to nearby San Francisco and Tudela, but the fare was prohibitive at more than a hundred pesos per passenger. One could find a four-wheel vehicle or two with cheaper fare, but these were rickety and easily got full. Since the boats arrived at dawn, I would wait until the boat left for Tudela in the afternoon.
When I was in Tudela and wanted to go to Poro, I preferred to walk rather than wake up early in the morning to ride those rickety four-wheel vehicles. I was young and loved the countryside so walking was an adventure. But there were instances when I got older that I would go on a trek following the footpaths from the house of my late Nanay Bunding in a place called Hambabawod in Poro to Tudela’s mountain barangay of General, the birthplace of my father Tiyong.
In the first few treks I was accompanied by my cousins, but soon I already could do it on my own. I would pass by Alta Vista, the Poro mountain barangay whose name described its high location and on near the Kantumaru peak then finally to General. I remember one time being drawn by a sight from afar of what looked like a collapsed hill that formed a valley near General.
My cousin told me of a story handed down by their elders about the collapse of the slope there decades ago. I was reminded of that story after the massive landslide hit Barangay Tina-an in the City of Naga last month. Indeed, it is possible for slopes to collapse even without cement plants quarrying the limestone from the mountains.
Which reminded me of a cave in one of the mountain barangays of Cebu City where we once rested for a night. It was a small cave that was very dry and whose wall and roof had cracks everywhere. I couldn’t sleep thinking that any time the structure would collapse on me. I don’t know the status of that cave now, but if it hasn’t collapsed yet I know it will in the years to come.
By the way, I was in Buhisan in Cebu City a couple of months ago with my City Central School batch mate to visit another batch mate whose house was near one bank of the river there. Buhisan straddles a valley surrounded by high mountains. I say the mountain whose slope has shown cracks is only one of those possibly fragile places around that village that need to be constantly monitored by the government.