The wife and I made a fast trip to Subic last November 18. I brought along my digital camera to take some pictures along the way. I was also hoping we could find some time to go to a river or to the beach and take some pictures there. Here's what happened.
The North Expressway is made up of of lots of rice fields and grasslands, from Bulacan to Pampanga, a good 20 kilometers or so. These lands get flooded during rainy season, even to the point of overflowing the highway itself. During summer, you'll see green fields and blue skies. And patches of water. That's where water plants and local freshwater fish thrive.
Also, during the last five to eight years that I have been travelling from Pangasinan (farther up North) to Manila, I have been observing white birds with long legs, in flocks, landing on the fields and eating. I suppose they are local egrets on migration, but to where or from where I cannot guess. But I do see them at regular times of the year, which I think has become a nuisance to the farmer, since they are flocking on the rice fields and must be destroying crops. Maybe some UP smarts could make a study of these birds so a solution can be found, before the farmers get some ideas on how to drive them away. I bet they would make good-tasting delicacies to local residents and irate farmers. Talk about sweet revenge, or rather, tasty revenge.
Let's go back to the fields and grasslands thing. The long strecth of land has lots of patches of water, pools, ponds, and rivers, that perform as sources of water for the ricefields. That is why sometimes the farmers are able to plant rice twice a year, and obviously harvest twice the capacity of the land in a given year. These patches of water are there year-round and provide a good habitat for both water plants and animals, specially fish. I would love to get off the bus on one of my trips to Subic and take pictures up close. I bet I could just dive in there and find lots of local fish for my aquarium. That's wishful thinking though. If you get off the bus in the middle of that long stretch of greenery (which is illegal as per highway laws), chances are nobody's going to stop and pick you up once you remerbered you have to go home. Highway robberies are common in these parts, not to exclude some groups who actually hijack 18-wheelers loaded with goods. I know, my former boss's trucks sometimes get hijacked in these parts. Until the technology of the cellular phone came.
But that's another story. Anyway . . .
