My Love Affair with Vigan, Part 1

Image from a FB friend

When I first set my eyes on Vigan, it was though I was still in a dream. Still groggy with sleep after an all-night land trip, I found myself as if transported to another time. In the awakening light and the clip-clopping of the horses on the cobblestone street, the first thoughts that came to my mind was, "Oh my, I could run into Rizal's Crisostomo Ibarra in these streets!" A little dramatic but what can you expect from a then college student with a student theater group visiting the place for performances in schools in that area.

I was of course wrong about running into fictional characters but I was certainly not disappointed about encountering ghosts from the past. We were billeted in a hotel which was a renovated mansion from an earlier century, just what you would expect in a place like this. The girls were given a big room which helped us imagine that we were friends of Maria Clara after a party. In the early morning, I woke up with the disturbed thought that there was a presence that was looking at me intently, curious about who were. I did not dare open my eyes lest I see someone, convincing myself that there was no need to be afraid as it might be just a figment of my ever-active imagination. But over breakfast, a friend related having the same feeling which led us to conclude that we indeed had a nocturnal visitor.

And to convince us further that friends from the past lurked in every corner, some photographs of our group in the house, showed shadows of dark and light which suggested that our cameras captured images moving in a parallel world.

To our young, adventurous minds,Vigan was an exciting place where the past would always be preserved, where there were many more stories about the past that could be discovered. I had fallen in love with the place but like a young lady who has to leave a summer romance, I left the place reluctantly. But I was determined that I would be back someday to rekindle that romance.