Piglets run across the national highway. Goats meander from a patch of Bermuda grass to another under coconut trees where carabao sit in water-holes. Chicken zip side to side in a jiffy as the Port Barton Bus picks up speed and accelerates on the bend. Even monkeys cross it leisurely, half an hour out of Puerto Princesa to sit on a knot of elevated rocks to watch vehicles pass with amusement. Creeping plants climb on electric grids and the advance of nature is measured by stages on the metal structure to compete with the tallest trees along the road, as the modern world is left behind and a lush nature replaces it and constitutes the only scenery, with children in an enfilade out of school or in the shade of a sari-sari store or a nipa hut where fishermen mend their nets in the midday heat.
In rice fields, delicate white birds Sheryll calls "tagak" with thin pencil-like legs, stand motionless to pick on insects and toads, or else glide delicately between coconut trees and giant bamboo reeds.
The carabao is everywhere in these rice fields with their horns in dried mud and thick head staring motionless like some Lapu-Lapu warrior mask forgotten in these mud holes.
Rice farmers plod heavily behind these thick animals holding a metal rack to straff the roots and stubble from earlier harvests, knee high into the soggy soil, colorful hooded men covered from head to toe to hide from the sun, like mysterious jungle outlaws of past times, with machetes on the waist, progressing in heavy movements to domesticate the tropical nature and level the soil to channel the excess of rain water, in the dying sun at the end of the day, as all this upheaval attracts the choreographic dances of low flying swallows.
New sprouts of banana leaves stand like spears in the blue of the sky, yellowish green, to unfurl, open up and assume the dark-green color of maturity to then hang and turn dry-brown and fall like broken wings, Sheryll calls "Upas", where the night wind rustles.
"Copra" coconut and newly harvested palay is left to dry in the sun on lengths of tarpaulin, on the side of the road, where hard working men bend to rake again and again.
Along "vulcanizing" sheds and "repair shops" and rusted mechanics and discarded motor parts and machinery in the dust and overgrowth.
Baby linen, colorful children cloth all along bamboo fences and wash lines, dry between nipa huts, on thin bamboo reeds, stripes of nylon cut in ribbons move with the slightest wind from the hands of a scarecrows to frighten birds, in the gentle undulating valleys and dales, bordered by clumps of bamboo thickets and thick green forest walls difficult to penetrate.
Vast acacia tree shades hold a shadow so deep that a constant dusk-dimness hovers underneath it all day, as the tall silvery Mangium trees retains the flickering sun in its leaves, the green of the mahogany such as an oil painting tableau, with a much deeper hue underneath than there really is, bluer than blue.
Tufts of banana sprouts and clusters of coconut trees, other trees and grass and creeping plants in multiple colors, shapes and size, hang from these hoary giant trees, like pelts.
The Pacific jungle creeps back in every man-made opening, right to the border of the cement road on the North Highway where it had been opened to link sea-port to sea-port, Puerto Princesa, Port Barton, Taytay and El Nido, undefeated or subdued after so many centuries, impressive trees and greenery reaching from the darkness of the deep cool dimness of damp valleys to reach for the light, along the serpentine road and swaying curves and dented bends where rocks had fallen with the mudslides after the sudden rains, drained in gullies and creeks along moss covered rocks, in this sparkling sunlight and clear air, where the native peasant walks barefoot all his life along these roads, his face stern and harsh, a machete at his waist, his silhouette lean and supple, he's the barefoot wayfarers on this virgin land.
