Moriones Festival 2010, Marinduque – April 1, 2010 (Maundy Thursday)

Waking up fresh (from the crowing of a nearby rooster), we took a bath and left Happy Bunny’s at around 7:00am. We went on foot around the town. Our first stop was to hunt for breakfast.

First impressions of Boac, Marinduque.

Boac is like any other town in the Philippines. The streets bustling with tricycles, motorcycles, and a few jeepneys. What was fascinating though was that there were a lot of stores open… at 7:00am… which was unusual by itself, but during Holy Week? This was true for Maundy Thursday and even Good Friday. Establishments like the local Supermarket, Sari-Sari stores, even Beauty Parlors were open and ready to serve customers.

We had breakfast at Cafe Ma Mita, a quaint little restaurant connected to the Boac Hotel.

The Cafe was really nice and very tastefully decorated. The walls had framed pages from old Magazines from the late 60s to the early 70s. There was an old article from The Philippine Panorama dated 1967 featuring the Moriones Festival of that time. There were a few ads for Tide, Magonlia Dairy Products, and such. There were black and white pictures from Student Canteen on the wall (if you don’t know what Student Canteen was, you were not born yet). There was even a working phonograph with LP vinyl records available to be played.

The menu was tempting me to order their famous sausages. I settled for a plate of longsilog. Came with coffee. And all for just P85

YUM! Simple, yet satisfying.

We started walking around Boac and started with the Boac Cathedral which was just across the Cafe. We walked up this little road at the side of the Cathedral.

The Cathedral is a nice old church, put up in 1792. Well maintained. The church was a buzz with activity. I wasn’t sure what was happening but there were a lot young teenagers coming in with some older ladies.

From the church I took view of my first Moriones roaming the town. I later found out that the Moriones (Roman Soldiers) roam the whole island in the whole week (from Holy Monday) searching for Saint Longinus… the Roman Soldier who thrust his spear into Christ’s side.

As we walked around the town, we found ourselves at the town center into a large covered courts which served as some sort of staging areas for all the Moriones… young and old. We weren’t sure what they were all doing there, but it did seem like the meeting place for all of the Moriones and the 3 associations they belong to. This seemed to be where all the action was. As such, the place was also full of tourists.

Jasper and I were talking about how male kids probably look forward for the time when they too can take part of the Moriones Festival. In the above picture, we have what appears to be a father and son team.

Here I am with a big mock up of Saint Longinus, the Roman Soldier blind in one eye.

Above is the National Museum… with a Morion waiting.

We stuck around waiting for some 9:00am activity to get started… a parade of the Moriones. Well, we later found out that nothing was ever on schedule.

At around 10:00am we decided to go back to the lodge, get the car and go around the island, in a clockwise route. It was when we went underway that we decided to do Bisita Iglesia of 7 churches (this is a separate blog post: http://lakwatsero.me/2010/04/01/bisita-iglesia-in-marinduque-april-1-2010/)

During our quest around the island through the six municipalities, in between stopping at churches, we would stop to take pictures of interesting sights.

We came up to a Mangrove restoration site. There were kids swimming them jumping off the mangrove.

By lunchtime we stopped by Poctoy White Beach for lunch. The beach was crowded. The huts were full of partying groups… families… friends. We had “paluto” of inihaw na bangus.

Poctoy is one of the more popular beaches, publicly accessible (you just need to pay P10 per pax). With picnic huts and stores selling all sorts of cooked food, shakes, and you can even rent Karaoke machines… as evidenced by all the sintunado beach-goers.

 
Every now and then we would stop and just take pictures of the breadth taking scenery.

As we were going through Gasan, we encounter around a dozen Gigante. We got back to Boac by around 4:00pm. We went back to explore the town and read up on tomorrow’s activities.

There was a “festival” area where booths were set up by different participating establishments.

We ate dinner at a place just labeled “Cafe” It was a nice cozy little place (the picture above was taken earlier in the morning). The food here was quite good considering. There were a lot of people and I was particularly disgusted by all these Manilenos talking very rudely at the poor local waitresses. One guy was complaining that his french fries never arrived. He later complained that his Royal True Orange – which was the last bottle – was served to someone else. Later some annoying woman was complaining that they didn’t know how to prepare a proper cappuccino. Geez, not everything in Starbucks is proper too. Haay… these tourists are only guests here, they should show more respect to the locals.

We got back to the lodging and proceeded to… Facebook. We planned our activities for Good Friday.

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