A Busload of Bus Memories

This morning, I saw a video of a burning Guiwan bus terminal on Facebook. According to an article, the fire happened last Monday and razed the old place to the ground. That terminal has been around forever and is probably way overdue for a replacement but still, it is our city’s only bus depot. How will people travel to Pagadian and Dipolog and all those other places in the meantime?

I have many memories of that terminal. Bus rides to my father’s hometown. Bus rides to my mother’s hometown. Bus rides to Dipolog. Bus rides to Pagadian.

My dad’s family lived in a different place, so when we were kids, we would take four-hour long bumpy, dusty bus rides for reunions on some Christmas breaks.

My dad has a huge family. He is the ninth of eleven children and among them all, he has the least number of kids except for his one sister who has none. The most number of kids from one sibling: sixteen, of which thirteen are alive. On this side, I have 85 first cousins in total.

My mother’s family, on the other hand, lived on the other side of Mindanao. It was eighteen hours away by bus, so we were able to go just once, during the summer after my dad’s old office was abolished.

It was our first family summer vacation of the only two that we had. My mom has only two siblings, and only her sister was alive; her brother had died many years ago.

I have 14 first cousins on her side of the family, making my total of first cousins = 99.

We visited my aunt and some cousins scattered in Cagayan de Oro, Bukidnon, and Davao. From Davao, we rode a ship back to my hometown. It was my first time to ride a ship.

When I was a senior in College, Cate and I were vice president and president of our school’s local Junior Philippine Institute of Accountants (JPIA) chapter.

We came up with a plan that got our entire block to attend the JPIA Regional convention in Dipolog, which is six hours away from our city. We also decided to require all our attending members to buy and wear the JPIA t-shirt that we had designed and which won the contest for being the best JPIA t-shirt.

It was a fun outing, notwithstanding the fact that I spent a lot of that time avoiding my “boyfriend” at that time because I had realized that I didn’t like him after all.

We got to visit the famous Rizal shrine in Dapitan, which was just a short distance away. No more outlandish things like climbing 1000 steps up a mountain while wearing a denim skirt, which was what I did when I went there the first time, to have a meeting about this particular event, some three months earlier.

Then there was that time I worked in Davao for a couple of months and decided to go back home during Christmas.

While travelling from Davao to Cagayan, a storm caused a landslide in the mountains that blocked the way for buses to pass through. There were two buses stuck on each side, and they decided to switch passengers and head back the same way they came.

In the dead of night, using only the faint glimmer of flashlights to lead us, we walked barefoot in the mud with our things on our backs.

I stopped over for a day in Cagayan to meet relatives then hopped on another bus – literally hopped on one after running after it, since it was the holidays and there were so many people going home.

6 hours from Davao to Cagayan plus 18 hours from Cagayan to my city equals 24 hours of travel.

When I got home, I slept for 24 hours straight, my body so beat up from the bumpy roads.

I wonder if they have cemented all the roads now. They should, because it’s long overdue the same way that the Guiwan bus terminal was long overdue for an overhaul too.