“Currimao has become one of the best places we Ilocanos can be proud of”
It’s 9.48 pm, and your flight to Laoag has been on a descent from 31,000 feet. Through your porthole you see below, breathing like summer fireflies, coruscant lights nearly forming the letter C.
Your friends from Metro Manila, on private wheels who rolled out of the city border after lunch that day for the seven-hour trip to Ilocos Norte’s capital of Laoag, before turning right in Gaang on the Pan Philippine Highway – previously called MacArthur Highway – for the short cut saw the same bubbly spectacle despite their 70 kms per hour speed.
You and your friends are looking at the same evening extravaganza in the heretofore sleepy town of Currimao, 463 kms north of Manila’s Luneta Park, its 220 lamp posts dotting the 2.8-km sea boulevard facing the serene Luzon Bay.
A little over three hours earlier, residents and visitors from nearby towns started linking up at the seawall, where small town vendors have set up their wares for the weekend, with multitude of tourists feasting their eyes on the slowly sinking crimson ball, waiting for the Ilocos sun to finally vanish at 6.15 while the Pink Moon, which rose above the Ilocos mountain range on April 12, was watching the bayside throngs.
This is Currimao, nearly 36 square kms of land, whose jagged shoreline is incessantly lapped by surf and ripples, caressing its beaches and the “kissing rocks” in Pangil Bay west of the town proper.
On the ground, we had the chance to exchange narratives with some of those who tried to enjoy the “Currilights” – an acronym for Currimao lights – at dusk with the rising summer moon.
Those who want to spend overnight or a few days in the town have a several hotels and tourist inns to suit their different budgets and preferences: beachfront resorts, budget-friendly hotels and smaller tourist inns.
We met Carolyn Pascua, an account officer in a multipurpose insurance cooperative in Batac, enjoying the group’s empanada, barbeque and siomai from the nearby vendors while watching others jogging along the cemented boulevard.
Not far from her was Teresita Alega of Maglaoi Sur. from the southside of the town, a retired rural bank executive, enjoying with her grandchildren the Ilocos miki (noodles), oyster scallops, shawarma, and takoyaki or octopus balls on their disposable plates.
“You should see also the rocks and reefs in Pangil,” she said, pointing to the direction, a little over one km northwest from where we were, adding “the rocks there are head-in-the-clouds kissing rocks.”
Marlene Caditan, on her day off as a caregiver in Batac, admitted being tempered by the calm waters of Currimao Bay, having watched earlier the soothing sunset, ignored by joggers that passed her by while sipping her steaming cup of vanilla coffee, affordable by her account at only P50.
Nearby were retired Judge Augustus Diaz and his wife Sza Sza, both from nearby Paoay but enjoying their retirement years through globe travels if they are not in the metropolis.
“The lights are beautiful, they are sights to behold, just like the lights in Paris,” she told us, referencing to “La Ville Lumiere” in Paris, with its early adoption of widespread street lighting, particularly in the 19th century, enhanced by its iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, and the subtle, carefully curated lighting systems of its monuments.
Near the couple was Hazel Fagaragan, a local government employee from Pinili town, where warriors walked during the Philippine-American War and the Second World War in the 1940s.
She admitted the “Currilights” – glinting from dusk to dawn – set up during the incumbency of Mayor Edward Quilala, who committed to rejuvenate his town’s infrastructure and generate jobs, “has become one of the most sought after tourist destinations in Ilocos Norte because it is endowed with the natural beauty of its beaches as well as the warm hospitality of its people.
“With the installation of lights on its sea walls, it further enhanced the beauty that Currimao already possesses. The lights, enhanced by the presence of eateries and bars, definitely attract people from all walks of life.
“Truly, Currimao has become one of the best places we Ilocanos can be proud of.”
The “Currilights” irradiate five of the town’s 23 barangays – Pangil, Poblacions 1 and 2, Lioes, Torre and Salugan – while traversing along the centuries-old coastal graveyard boxed in by the provincial road and the seaboard to what old hands used to call the sheltered conference grounds.
On Salugan’s reefs-dotted waterside, the ruins of an enemy ship which ran aground after it was bombed in the 1940s by liberation forces headed by Gen. Douglas MacArthur used to be a sight up to 1959 – before unidentified looters plundered the corroding booty.
Currimao offers much, with its trove of historical profile.