The jagged limestone cliffs, darkened over time by lichens and moss, immediately arrest your attention as you approach Malabuyoc town’s latest tourist destination, the hot springs and waterfalls of Montañeza. Those cliffs, the seven cascades that tumble down its side, and the hot springs that emerge just a meter above where the river flows, were clearly sacred and mystical to our ancestors.
The Spanish who named this place Montañeza, a colloquial or Esperanto derivation of the Spanish for mountain, were without doubt enthralled by its majesty.
It was thus against this backdrop that friends in the heritage advocacy movement in Cebu (Caloy Apuhin, Rudy and Louella Alix, Louie Narcorda, Bert Cabrera, Malou Samson, among others) visited the place over the weekend as guests of Malabuyoc’s indefatigable chief executive, Mayor Lito Narciso Creus. Eric Ybas, the town’s tourism officer, met us and ushered us to the place, about a kilometer inland from the National Highway.
The Department of Tourism (DOT) under its regional director, Rowena Montecillo, had clearly done its homework splendidly in working closely with the local government and with the local residents of this village that is now the subject of organized but controlled tour packages.
Even the paved road to this pocket of wonder in Cebu is not one where you would expect vehicular traffic to mar the landscape. The last time I was here two weeks ago, though briefly, there was a group from Thailand, Singapore and Germany that were ferried by a travel and tour agency in Moalboal town. Others had come from faraway Opon in Lapu-Lapu City and when I asked how they came to know of the place, the answer was by word of mouth. They had heard about it from a friend in Lapu-Lapu. It is thus no wonder that the municipality’s collection of a P20 entrance fee for the maintenance of the site now averages P80,000 pesos a month or something like 4,000 paying visitors each month.
As more and more tourists come, the DOT and the municipal government of Malabuyoc are worried that the place will be spoiled and end up like the utterly unplanned Kawasan Falls, whose development in the early 1980s antedated the era of master planning and heritage zoning. At Montañeza, there are now plans to move the parking lot even farther from its current location, because a normal day now would bring in about six to 10 cars parked about 200 meters from the site. Already the site is off limits after five o’clock in the afternoon, allowing the local residents to relax and be with themselves thereafter.
The site is impeccable. Warning, welcome and explanatory signs coupled with a must-attend quick orientation given by local residents wearing identification cards tell you immediately the serious attention to detail that this place demands as an ecotourism destination. No one is allowed to bring food to the river, the three hot pools and the waterfalls. Everyone has to be guided when climbing the steps to reach the seven cascades that make up the waterfall. There are signages explaining the health benefits of sulfuric springs and one can choose from three pools in varying degrees of heat, from 46.9 degrees to around 32 degrees.
A place very near the site has been designated for locals to eat. Local guides, trained by Eric and the DOT help you to navigate the river and the springs as well as the cascades. The DOT also trained locals in massage and then set up a dry-massage spa in a spacious bamboo structure beside another one where guests could eat. But take note that the guides are also trained to gently remind an errant visitor how to behave properly in such a mystic place as this.
It was at this large hut, a smaller version of a pre-Spanish chieftain’s receiving hall or long house, that we were served lunch with Mayor Creus and his wife, Daisy, also a former mayor of the town, as hosts.
I surprised everyone on the green anahaw leaves that were festooned around the hut by telling them of the Jesuit historian Ignacio Alcina’s mid-1600s description of pre-Spanish ritual practitioners or priestesses and priests called babaylan or the effeminate male equivalent, the asug, who carried the anahaw leaf as a symbol of authority and power. It was most appropriate, I told them, that such a place that must have been mystical, then as now, in our pre-colonial past, would have an abundance of the very leaf that ancient ritual practitioners used as a kind of fan to beckon the spirits.
I have no doubt that this place was sacred to our ancestors who must have wondered why hot waters were coming out of a cliff wall while cold water was flowing down seven cascades to the river beside it. The dark karst landscape, punctuated by white sections of the limestone cliffsides are in themselves awesome yet frightful to behold if you were left alone in this place.
Thankfully, the development of this place following strict ecotourism principles ease such frightful but mystical images and allow us not just a glimpse of nature’s opposing forces at work, but also time to be with friends as we sink our bodies for just five minutes or less in one hot pool and then run to the river to cool down and see steam rising from our skins.
There is a lot more coming for Malabuyoc’s future. But for now, go and savor the springs and be well.
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