In Benguet, strawberry fest makes sweet comeback

‘BERRY’ AFFORDABLE Strawberry season in Benguet province usually means high prices, but some vendors at Baguio City public market are selling a kilo of this tourist favorite for P150 to P200 as of Friday, March 17, 2023. La Trinidad, the capital town of Benguet, has resumed all in-person events for its Strawberry Festival. —VINCENT CABREZA

LA TRINIDAD, BENGUET — Strawberries again took the spotlight in this Benguet provincial capital with the resumption of the in-person festival that has helped turn this vegetable-growing town into a distinct tourist destination.

“We once had guests who announced to their friends that they were in Baguio picking strawberries,” said Mayor Romeo Salda on Friday during the main program of this year’s Strawberry Festival, which is being restaged with parades since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in 2020.

He said the tourists’ account happened during the term of the late Mayor Nestor Fongwan, who quickly informed the visitors that “they were no longer in Baguio” and had actually crossed to La Trinidad Valley.

La Trinidad and the rest of Benguet, Salda said, are producing the strawberries, flowers, and vegetables that tourists buy in Baguio.

It took a Guinness World Record in 2004 for people to pay more attention to this bustling town, he said.

READ: Cakes, pastries drum up interest in Benguet’s strawberry festival

Largest cake

In the same year, the official Guinness Book of World Records certified a 9,622.23-kilogram strawberry shortcake made by La Trinidad bakers as the largest in the world.

The display of the strawberry cake soon became an annual event of the La Trinidad Festival, which was first organized in 1981 during the term of Mayor Hilarion Pawid.

The return of the festival’s street dancing and float parades on Saturday, March 18, would also mark La Trinidad’s economic rebound, said Philippine National Police chief Gen. Rodolfo Azurin Jr., who spoke at the program.

READ: Benguet folk, tourists partake of giant strawberry cake

The pandemic “tested our resilience as individuals as well as a community,” and the return of tourists has rewarded the “strong will, hard work and indomitable spirit” displayed by La Trinidad residents, said Azurin, who grew up in Barangay Betag and studied in nearby Baguio.

Like the rest of the country, lockdowns and quarantines forced most of La Trinidad’s industries to shut down, except for food production. Benguet gardens grow 80 percent of the daily vegetable requirements of Metro Manila.

READ: Benguet prepares giant cake for Strawberry Festival

Tourism is also an emerging industry for the town, which serves as a vegetable trading center, according to tourism officer Valred Olsim.

But because of restrictions on leisure travel in 2020 and 2021, La Trinidad received only a combined 40,000 tourists for the first two years of the pandemic, he said.

But, 250,000 people visited La Trinidad last year when most public health regulations were lifted, Olsim said.