By Marilou Guieb | Photos by Mau Victa
IT’S that time of year again when the mercury dips to its lowest in Baguio City, but the festive fever rises to bursting point with the celebration of the hottest tourism event—the Panagbenga, or flower festival.
Panagbenga, in many northern dialects, suggests a blossoming, and, indeed, the weekend highlights of the festival’s street dancing and the Grand Float Parade saw the blossoming of many wondrous flower-inspired creations.
It’s the 22nd year the event is brought to life, and while many cynics have questioned the sense of such an activity in between every festival, the sidewalks spill over with spectators year after year, just as dazzled with the wild twirling or the graceful passing of colors from the coolest hues of water to the most vivid tones of fire captured in fantasy floral creations. And so again they came to pass—many with a story to tell, several with their products deciphered with flowers, others in celebration of anniversaries or carrying an advocacy—but all with something to advertise—perhaps a cause or a company.
Even when it first appeared on the street, the long trailing float of North Luzon Expressway of the Manila North Tollways Corp., it was easy to guess it would emerge as grand winner in the big floats category. If anything, it best portrayed this year’s Panagbenga theme, “Inspired by Beauty, Nurtured by Nature. Made of hundreds of thousands of blossoms, the float named Beauty of the Wilderness, took its main business of road travel far into the wild—as its promotional ad said, to trek new trails, surrounded by fresh foliage and learn about the critters that complete the circle of life.
An impressive life-size white stallion adorned the float one can be fooled its not made out of white mums, and the centerpiece was a peacock with the full splendor of its fan-shaped tail meticulously formed with petals and blooms in the flirty colors of the peacock’s pride. The giraffe with its long neck hovering above the wild jungle of dainty flower touches was made of everlasting flowers and spots of yellow mums. Amusingly, an elephant of green mums had fluffy eyelashes of white petals.
Sitel’s coming in second was truly a fancy design of a float that mixed nature with forest elementals and the indicators of a pristine environment, like dragonflies and butterflies. A curious watchtower of brown and maroon blossoms stood at the center of the stage facing an ivory face of white flowers. The story goes that the tower depicts stewards of nature watching over Mother Nature. Gnomes had tufts of dyed tiger grass and were created to pay tribute to the industrious employees, as gnomes are known for being hardworking creatures.
Coming in third was the float of the Department of Tourism carrying images of the Cordillera. Unlike other floats made of plucked flowers, this float used 40-percent potted plants and ornamentals. Tourism Regional Director Marie Venus, riding the float, has long advocated the use of potted plants that can afterward be donated to schools to be nurtured instead of the millions of petals that go to waste after the parade. The float was to promote tourism’s major thrust, Rev-Bloom, which means the revitializing and reblooming of Baguio through community participation.
The crouching tiger of Maybank Philippines atop a yellow beetle Volkswagen bagged the grand prize among the 10 entries in the small-floats category. So realistically was the figure of the tiger formed it was easy to imagine with its flexed muscles that it would be leaping out from the Volks’ roof anytime in chase of some prey. Its brown stripes were made from palay glued to the chrome yellow papier mâché figure. The Volks was of happy yellow mums with yellow sidings and bumpers of white flowers. Maybank was one of the companies that joined in celebration of its 20th year in the Philippines. Tiger is its brand logo signifying strength and aggressiveness and as the fourth-largest bank in Southeast Asia, the emerging tiger economy. The Volks spoke of the bank’s 15 years in the auto loans business. In its signature color, Coca-Cola came second, streaming through the streets in flashy red roses shaped into waves with white mums forming the crest—the undulating shape also to stir the bubbly feeling that is the Coke itself when poured into a glass to drink.
Asus brought its Zenfone to the caravan in a variety of colored mums and took the third prize.
Filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik and the city’s iconic artist once wondered if the celebrity clamor so in character of Pinoy crowds does not actually steal away the appreciation from the floral art that glide before their eyes.
And true to his words, all the squeals and cheers and attention begging of the crowd for the stars to look their way certainly leave no room to look at the flowers.
Warring stations GMA and ABS-CBN had announced the stars to ride their floats way before the festival, and a thrilled crowd whispered about their excitement even before the parade started.
Some came as a surprise to make hearts beat faster for the adulating spectators and in the long stretches of the mainroads, the reverberating cheers warn the expectant crowd down the line that the next float coming carries a star.
One such surprise was the float of the Taloy Norte Farmers of four cooperatives and from afar one sees the name Carrotman boldly lettered in yellow mini chrysanthemums. And it was, indeed, Jeyrick Sigmaton in the flesh that swept the crowd in pleasant surprise—unlike last year’s expectations when Carrotman turned out to be a meme as a joke in a float filled with carrots and veggies promoting a farmer’s group.
It is the story behind Sigmaton’s fame that has endeared him worldwide, especially to Cordillerans here and those spread around the world. The diaspora of Cordillerans globally seeing in Sigmaton the pride of their ethnicity.
If anything says that Sigmaton is still on the rise it is the echoing sound of cheers, like the fading roar of lions long after his float has passed.
Sigmaton was a farm hand and once a tourist took photos of him carrying a basketful of carrots and posted it on the Internet, calling him the most handsome man on earth. They did not know his name and just dubbed him Carrotman. He became an overnight sensation without his knowing. And there’s the rest of the story.
The floats of the rivaling television networks were not as ornate nor sensational but the stars glittered brighter than flowers for the cheering crowd. ABS-CBN stars Bea Alonzo and Enchong Dee alighted from their float to mingle with the crowd clamoring for selfies. GMA 7 love-team sensation AlDub not to be beaten had Alden Richards throwing flowers to his fans whenever their float stopped.
A favorite float was MLhuiller, where Jericho Rosales stood beside his royal carriage of everlasting flowers pulled by a white horse of mums with a green mane of ferns. He took as many photos of the crowd as fans clambered to the side of the carriage for selfies.
When it was over, the Session Road in Bloom opened the next day for a week of gourmet treats and stalls with products from different towns on sale. Atop the road is the quiet art installation of Kidlat Tahimik, a traditional art rendition every year, this time of a giant rooster made of wire mesh and ferns and surrounded by Ifugao woodcarvings, an installation of silent creativity standing like a guardian towering over the vibrant commerce ongoing on the main throughfare.
The festival has its own pace and rhythm now, it being the 22nd celebration.
Like an old flambouyant friend, Panagbenga comes like an expected guest in the city even if it is its very own, stirring a lot of flurry and chaos, certainly stirring irritants like traffic and garbage and the ripples of what one may call diplomatic internal squabbles.
But in the end the city’s people shrug their shoulders on the downsides and say, well, that was fun, too, for there is no arguing the fleeting floats of beauty and the sparkling costumes in the street dance make for a good break from the doldrums of daily struggles of keeping apace life’s hurried ways.