The City of Baybay, Leyte recently opened the “16,000 Blossoms” park, a mountain-top garden adorned by 16,000 LED lights, as part of its 10th cityhood day.
Located at the Lintaon Peak, the city’s highest point, the park is comprised of white and red roses embedded in the grassy meadow forming the phrase “I Love Baybay.”
According to Baybay Mayor Carmen Cari, the park is part of the city’s tourism development plan, which will transform the area into the Lintaon Ecotourism Zone. Once completed, the park will have an information center, view deck, pavilion, picnic areas, and other tourist facilities.
The proposed zone overlooks the city, the Camotes Sea, and the nearby islands of Cuatro Islas in Inopacan town and Camotes in Cebu.
A tall image of the city’s patron saint Immaculate Conception will also be erected to make it a pilgrimage site, due to its proximity to the Diocesan Shrine of San Antonio de Padua.
The church, which draws over 300,000 devotees annually to venerate the saint’s image, which is believed to be miraculous, is the region’s top cultural attraction and part of Baybay’s more than 647,000 annual day visitors, the highest in Region 8 based on data from the Department of Tourism.
Cari said she will endorse the project to the Regional Development Council of Eastern Visayas to make the site as a regional attraction to boost its tourism potentials.
Baybay, the biggest municipality in Leyte, was proclaimed a city on June 16, 2007 and was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2012 after a series of legal battles.
It is host to the Visayas State University, one of the country’s biggest agricultural learning institutions, plus a long coastline, a heritage lane showcasing ancestral houses, and several factories of pulp paper and virgin coconut oil.