I have been crisscrossing the province, up-North and down-South, during my work at the Department of Trade and Industry. In some occasions I encountered fellow Surigeños jokingly tells me the Latest Tourist Attraction of the provinces. I'm flabbergasted that they are referring to the badly damaged national road that snakes from the Iron Mountain of Surigao down to the Municipality of Lingig. Of course we know that SdS offers a great variety of spots that tourists would surely love and admire.
They told me that if you desire to promote SdS as the Prime Eco-Tourism Destination in Caraga or in Mindanao, the tourism campaign banner should go like this - "Enjoy a Luxurious Trip and Experience a Rollercoaster-like Ride like no other... That's the Way We Usher Your Visit to Surigao del Sur, the Prime Eco-Tourism Destination of the Philippines."
Their translation of that banner: "luxurious" translates to "lukso-lukso" and "rollercoster-like ride" literally means "the feeling you get having to experience those bumpy roads".
I remember one time on my way home from Barobo, I was accidentally (incidentally) seated in the bus with a fair lady who happened to be from Davao and was visiting a friend in Tandag. It was February then and we know that on this month the weather/climate in our province gets even wetter and wetter, if you know what I mean. Having this weather condition running from November to March, the national road which are mostly unpaved gets badly damaged that it's difficult for vehicles to pass. In the words of one of the paticipants in the seminar we conducted - "Sa una maagihan pa yaon nan sakyanan. Pero kuman bisan kabaw dili na makaagi." That is, of course, an exaggeration.
Experiencing the "rollercoster-like trip" i.e. the bus tripping off to the right, to the left and then the driver applying the break abruptly every interval of 10 seconds, the lady asked me, "Dili kaha matumba kaning bus." Apparently, I told her the most logical answer that "dili ang bus matumba". And we both laugh at the thougth of it.
That is the perennial problem of commuters, residents, businesspeople, et. al. traveling in-or-out of the province during the "very" wet season. Surigeños fabricated this so-called latest-tourism-attraction to refer to the bad condition of the national highway as a pretext to endure one or more days, weeks and even more years having to traverse this road. And never to lose hope that one day the National Government will notice this predicament the people of SdS are undergoing for several years now especially in the transport of province products to the market.The governor had spoken last month that his job to maintain all provincial highways were already done. Concreting the national highways is not the governor's job but he had vowed to bring the matter to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
The Surigeños hope and dream that the President would heed the call of the governor and made this project possible before her term ends. The Surigeños believe that with good road network this would open an efficient and productive trade and commerce in the province. Of course, it would also provides tourists, foreign or local alike, easy access to the different tourist spots in the province. Indeed, the province would become the Prime Eco-Tourism Destination of the Philippines in 2015.
