Rizal’s El Filibusterismo (1891) begins with a Pasig River voyage.  Passengers gaze at the passing scene—bamboo groves, rice fields, nipa huts, riverside mansions, salambao (fishermen’s rafts), produce- and fodder-filled boats, indios working, swimming, washing clothes—while bantering over river legends:

• Buayang bato, the crocodile turned into stone by San Nicolás de Tolentino responding to a heathen’s screams as zoology’s Crocodylus mindorensis (not the species now infesting high circles) approached.

• Ghostly nighttime revelry and gold plates tossed into the water from La Cueva de Doña Jerónima high on a cliff.  A Spanish maiden was courted then forgotten by a young man who in time becomes Archbishop of Manila.  One otherwise routine day, a travel-weary Jerónima appears, demanding fulfillment of her beau’s long-ago promise.  His Excellency refuses and exiles the jilted ex to an upriver cave where she spends the rest of her days. 

• Malapad na bato, the broad rock that ancient Tagalog held sacred, the home of gods and spirits.

In later decades, storyteller Doña Gervasia de Guzman Zamora (“Lola Basyang”) and writer Severino Reyes recounted the tragic story of the farmer Siso and the mermaid of the whirlpool Ena (“Ang Sirena sa Uli-Uli ng Ilog Pasig”).  Nicanór Abelardo composed “Mutya ng Pasig,” the kundiman that became signature song and title of the 1950 movie of the phantom of a heartsick Ophelia singing her haunting (literally) song at full moon.

Thus psyched, old Manila hand Julie Hill (visiting from California) and I boarded the ferry at Guadalupe, eager to experience the river of fable and romance.

Oil tank farms and uncounted laundry-festooned homes have replaced rice fields and bamboo groves of yore.  The only fishers were white birds—could be the migratory whistling terns in my bird watchers’ book—skimming Sta. Mesa flotsam.  And better not jump in.

Don’t miss the Makati riverside park, Malacañang (photographs verboten, but looking exactly like the R20 bill) and its gardens, Hospicio de San José (built 1810), the neo-classic Manila Post Office, ruins of the mid-1800s Intendencia in Intramuros, and the boarded-up FNCB and El Hogar Filipino Buildings on Muelle de la Industria.  The Lichauco house, just past the Sta. Ana wet market, peeks from behind a giant banyan tree.

The ride is pleasant, prompt (one hour on the dot, from Guadalupe to Intramuros) and reasonable (R40).  While there is plenty of local color, the experience would be more memorable with say bamboo, caballero, balete, and bougainvillea along the way, discreetly located garbage dumps and laundry lines, more window flower boxes, and please, street lamps less stupefying than those lining Roxas Boulevard.

Nice, too, if someone exhumes the buayang bato from its unmarked grave below Robinson’s Center and clears the view to the restored Capilla de San Nicolás by Makati Aqua Sports Arena.  The cave of Dona Jerónima could still be in Pineda, Pasig; malapad na bato in Punta, Sta. Ana near the old Philippine Match plant; and Ena’s whirlpool near St. Jude’s and a short and narrow street named Uli-Uli.

Comments are cordially invited, addressed to walalang@mb.com.ph.