Mangroves show their graceful hold on land and water.

The start of our Sabang River tour in Palawan displays the lovely grace of the mangrove (bakawan) trees which almost totally shade our open banca. Their roots clinging to the sandy river bank show graceful arc lines, some drawn in the greenish water.  According to our boatman, 34-year-old Delfin Murillo, this bakawan has existed for 500 million years BC.

Mangrove has served as nursery for fish; home for marine life, birds, amphibians, crustaceans, insects; receptacle for water sediments; nature’s protective elements from erosion, typhoon, flood, earthquake.  Every now and then Mang Delfin points at snakes coiled on branching twigs of bakawan or gliding upward or downward its trunk. Another small snake peeps in and out of a crab hole. My 150mm telephoto lens can’t capture even its tiny head framed by the hole opening.     

There are 26 varieties of mangrove, but to me they all appear the same.  According to the description of our boatman, female bakawan has bigger leaves, longer shoots (or fruit or pod), taller trunks.  Male bakawan has smaller leaves and shorter pod. (I am really short of the right mangrove terms.)

On either side of the long, narrow, winding Sabang river are exquisite scenes, jungle escapes, nature’s gems.  They are precious subjects for my lens.  Mang Delfin’s mangrove oral annotations and environment stories shift to an entertaining song about everything of Palawan composed to the tune of Paruparong Bukid . He accompanies his rendition with rhythmic beats of his palms and stomps of his feet against the banca floor.    

Other shoreline places in Palawan, are punctuated with mangrove.  The bakawan trees provide accents to the seascapes and landscapes of this beautiful place. . . indeed a precious subject to photographers, painters, artists and even ordinary viewers and travelers. Getting off the banca to leave the bakawan territory, I receive a pair of male and female bakawan shoots from Mang Delfin to be planted along the river bank.  I hope to return someday on this exact place not exactly to take another exciting ride but to see if I have somehow propagated the bakawan species in Palawan.

FPPF photography works(Mrs. Cecilia S. Angeles is a Fine Arts professor at PWU and a regular lecturer at the hops at Fort Santiago, Intramuros, Manila.)