Hello Steemit friends, this travel blog is about my visit to Mauban, Quezon.
Mauban, Quezon is perhaps known nowadays as the town that Cagbalete Island formally belongs to. Tourists usually flock in the town for that particular reason. And the Mauban sea port is usually overrun with crowds during the peak season. Cagbalete Island is a popular choice for beach bum Manilenyos (~Manila residents) wanting to get a quick fix of their "vitamin sea", as it is near Manila and the trip is relatively easy. You can literally go off from Manila at 8:00 in the morning, and be having the island life by lunch time. But the town of Mauban has many things to offer besides the island.
Getting to Mauban, you will have to ride a bus from Manila bound to Lucena City, the capital of Quezon Province. The last bus stop would be Lucena's Grand Terminal, and from there you will have to ride another bus bound to the town of Mauban. The scenery along the way would be typical of any rural towns in the country. Since Quezon Province is composed of valleys and mountains, it common to see terrace fields, but not too steep as compared to the ones in Benguet. The main crop planted in these fields is rice, but it is also common to see vegetable farms.
Alhough tourism and fishing are both a source of livelihood for the local residents, the town, just like the rest of Quezon province, actually count on the coconut industry as their main source of income. This is easily attested in the town's marker:
A giant ass buko (~coconut) fruit!
But it's also pretty easy to see when you look at their mountains. Coconut trees usually dot the terrain.
In the town proper, I was actually glad to see some traditional houses still intact. Sure, it is not as extensive as, let's say, Vigan. But these folks chose to restore their historical houses without expecting some incentives, or being part of a tourism drive.
Clearly the structure is being tested by time. But it has a certain charm.
Some of them have major modern upgrades, like this house:
After strolling the town for some time, we headed for the port. The port has the statue of someone. I asked lady owner of the carinderia where we ate our late lunch about the statue. She said the statue is that of Gat Uban (he is called as such, because apparently he had a predominant gray hairs even during his younger years; uban is the tagalog word for gray hair), he ruled as a chieftain and successfully led the resistance, and later on drove away pirates in the area. This apparently happened some 400 years ago. He is better known as Gat Pangil (~pangil means fangs) in other areas. He virtually ruled the territory of the modern provinces of Laguna and Quezon. That's bad ass! Anyway, the area he defended against the pirates is now the town of Mauban - the name of the town was from his namesake.
Bring it on, oh sea!
After some more quick strolling along the port, we registered in the visitor log and paid the environmental fee. Then we headed to Cagbalete Island (to be continued on the next post!^^).
