Masbate’s ranch tour offers slices of cowboy life

WHERE’S THE BEEF? Contestants in an event in the Rodeo Masbateño Festival in Masbate province are in a huddle to talk about their game plan on how to subdue a cow. MARK ALVIC ESPLANA

Giving tourists a taste of cowboy life is the way to go, when, after 23 years, it became obvious that the Rodeo Masbateño Festival successfully imprinted Masbate on the tourism map and revived the ailing cattle industry on the island-province.

Judge Manuel Sese, a local rancher, realized that not all tourists who visit the province every April for the rodeo events were also beach lovers, so he decided to make his ranch the perfect place for them to experience the outdoors.

“During the festival, visitors come here but eventually get bored. They were looking for something else in Masbate. They were asking what else we can offer them here,” he said.

Masbate is proud of its pristine beaches, but these cannot compete with the more established resorts and destinations elsewhere due to the absence of better tourism-related and airport facilities. “So we, ranchers, came up with the idea of a ranch tour, which is not offered anywhere else in the Philippines,” Sese said.

Sese is chair of Rodeo Masbateño Inc. (MRI), a civic organization which runs the yearly festival celebrating Masbate’s cattle industry and honoring its ranch workers. MRI has 130 rancher-members who can develop their properties as destinations for the tour program.

The tour offers the cowboy life in the ranch, where one can learn horseback riding, cattle herding, branding, lassoing, tackling and more. It complements the experiences of tourists on the beach.

For P600, one can enjoy different aspects of ranch routines for a day.

Last year, Sese hosted a barn party to launch the program in his sprawling cattle ranch on the top of a hill, which provides a panorama of its 700-hectare expanse in the village of San Juan in Mandaon town, more than 40 kilometers from the capital of Masbate City.

VISITORS can pitch tents and experience the outdoors at the ranch owned by the Sese family in Masbate. LEO GOZUM/CONTRIBUTOR

Since then, tourists have been patronizing the day-in-the-ranch package.

Sese, who hails from the town of Mandaon, 61 km from the city, started his farm 39 years ago with only 70 head of cattle. The place is now home to more than 400 head.

On the hilltop is a facility to accommodate tourists, equipped with a kitchen, shower room, toilets and a lounge. Guests can pitch a tent and build a bonfire while western music plays.

Sese plans to offer visitors food during the tour and rent out tents.

Mark Espinosa, administrator of a 500-ha family ranch in Milagros town, is developing a different concept of the ranch tour for his place where a community thrives inside the property and visitors can enjoy a hands-on experience on how cowboys work.

He wants tourists to immerse themselves in the community and savor the food, mostly fresh catch from the sea, it provides.

“[We] enjoyed a sumptuous meal prepared by villagers: steamed and stuffed crabs; crispy, fried and dried squid; and piping hot rice,” Monette Hamlin, president and founder of marketing communications firm TeamAsia and chair of the Philippine Association of Convention/Exhibition Organizers and Suppliers, said in her blog.

Hamlin said she made a mental note to include some 350 local children as beneficiaries of a gift-giving project after interacting with them.

The community integration educates visitors about how villagers live and work in the ranch, Espinosa said.

Barnaby Lo, a freelance journalist commissioned to do a rodeo documentary for “Assignment Asia” of Chinese Cable Television, went to Masbate for the festival in April.

Comparing Thailand’s ranches where a cattle herd is not being tended by cowboys but kept and fed in enclosures, Lo said Masbate is the only place in Asia where ranch life is an authentic experience.