THIS house atop Mt. Sto. Tomas has taken on some measure of celebrity, being the fictitious home of a fictitious “La Presa” village which has been featured in a TV soap opera. It’s drawn huge lines of tourists during the Yuletide break. EV ESPIRITU/INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON
TUBA, Benguet—Taxicab drivers in Baguio City said the crawling traffic during the Christmas and New Year holiday weeks actually led straight to Pungayan, a sleepy, mountainous village nestled some 2,000 feet atop the Mt. Sto. Tomas forest reservation here.
At 5 a.m. on Dec. 25, Christmas Day, village residents were roused from sleep by a long line of cars filled with tourists. People came to see “Sitio La Presa,” the fictional village in the ABS-CBN soap opera, “Forevermore,” which has been taping each episode at Pungayan for weeks now.
Before the show drew public attention, most Pungayan residents just grew salad vegetables. But hordes of strangers offered the village the chance to widen its economic horizon.
Alvin Catalino, 30, a vegetable grower, said his life used to begin at 5 a.m. to tend to his garden on the other side of the mountain, spending the rest of the day playing with his children and conversing with neighbors.
His routine now involves cooking fish balls, kikiam (sausage-like dish, a popular street food) and popcorn to sell to tourists, who hope to see a celebrity and take as many “selfies” of the upland area.
“People who come up, especially the children, are often hungry and thirsty. We sell food and drinks to them. I am happy to find another source of livelihood to support my family,” Catalino said.
His neighbors have followed suit and set up makeshift stalls, selling merchandise like T-shirts bearing the logo, “I Love You, La Prisa (sic).”
They also sell knitted bonnets called “Agnes hats,” named after a character in the show.
Valentina Domingo, 38, has been managing a small store to support her six children while her husband tills the land. But after the soap opera began airing, Domingo expanded her business to selling vegetables and souvenir items.
When the Inquirer visited Pungayan on Dec. 31, an old woman had just sold freshly-harvested sweet peas to a family from Manila who wandered near her garden.
Several farmers who don’t cook offered their services as parking attendants or rented out their front yard for parking at P25 a car a day.
Ice cream vendors also came. A vendor, who sells strawberry-flavored taho, said he earned as much as P3,000 a day without leaving the village during the holidays.
Business is also good for Cafe in the Sky, the only restaurant in the area that offers a view of Baguio City.
Leigh-Anne Guallar, 36, of Taguig City, said they motored to Baguio purposely to see “La Presa.” “We wanted to see the place because we wanted to be a part of the story,” she said.
“We had visited Baguio before but we would go to Camp John Hay and Burnham Park. Never this place. This is new to us,” she said.
She said her children were thrilled to see vegetable terraces. Guallar and her family took photographs of a house featured in the show.
Rosendo Catalino, the house owner, earns P20,000 each time the TV crew shoots scenes there, said one of his relatives.
Tuba Mayor Florencio Bentrez said he would not know how many visitors flocked to Pungayan, although residents claimed that they had been serving as many as 1,000 people a day since Dec. 22.
He said the Sto. Tomas communities normally charge visitors an environmental fee because the mountain is a protected area but they have waived this when tourism there boomed.