Mode of Transportation in my Province Iloilo

There's no such thing as province life, simple, full presence of nature, fresh air, and a peaceful environment. Very different from urban life which is full of noise and stressful condition. I grew up in my province Iloilo specifically in the local area of San Joaquin, I grew up in a simple life doing jobs on farms like feeding cows, goats, carabaos, and chickens.

I can say that life in the province is simple yet exciting, we aren't civilized unlike in Manila, our mode of transportation relies on what we can use. Usually, the livelihood of people in my province is farming and fishing since our place is located near mountains and the ocean that's why we are able to maximize every goods we can harvest. On farms, every time we are going to harvest the crops, we are using karosa, a man-made vehicle that is usually built of bamboo and pulled by carabaos to move it.

This is what karosa looks like and I have lots of memories of this one, every time we are going to harvest corn crops in our field, we are using karosa to carry sack of corn then deliver it on our house. When it's time to go back on the field to gather more of those corn crops then we are going to hop on karosa and enjoy riding on it, sometimes we feel that the carabao is exhausted therefore we gonna push karosa to ease the burden of carabao.

Another use of karosa is delivering goods to nearby barangay, our family working on a farm field that's why every time we harvest crops, fruits and vegetables, we are using karosa as our transportation to carry those sacks of crops. We don't give burden to carabaos actually after they helped us delivering those crops, fruits and vegetables, they will gonna enjoy swimming in mud for an hour then we will prepare their food and water, carabaos are herbivores that'a why their foods are composed of grass and leaves.

Another mode of transportation we usually ride on in our province is jeepneys, here in Manila there's only a maximum of 20 people inside the jeepney however in provinces like Iloilo, as long as there's a space, anyone can still occupy it. Usually, jeepneys rarely travel from one place to another therefore, locals took this opportunity to ride on jeepneys brought their crops, fruits, vegetables, and livestock such as chickens and goats.

I already experienced sitting on the roof of a jeepney since our journey is from Lawigan to Igtoyo, crops, fruits, vegetables, and livestock are inside the jeepney. You can choose to sit inside however you need to endure the mixed bad smells inside. We prefer to hop on the roof since it's more relaxing, but you need to be careful or else you'll fall to the wrong person.

The terrain isn't cemented that's why it is expected a rocky journey and hold on tightly to steel bars at the roof. The exciting part of hopping on the roof of the jeepney is the view you can see around, it's magnificent to see the beauty of nature. It's such a fun experience. Once we got a vacation in Iloilo then I'll definitely ride on a jeep and experience this one again.

A province life isn't fun if you are not the child of the sea, what I mean is, your swimming pool is the whole ocean. We are always at the sea taking a bath then my uncle had his own boat used for catching fish. We are always hopping on it to travel to the middle of the ocean to catch fish. It's very wonderful to see the bottom of an ocean filled with corals, fishes, sea urchins, and different formations of rocks.

If you have fear in sea water then I don't recommend looking at the bottom since even I am afraid that there might be a huge creature lurking underneath waiting to ambush our little boat. However, I can't deny the fact how beautiful our ocean is, it gives a lot of fish to harvest and it was filled with lots of corals and weeds.

Our boat had no motor that's why we manually paddled it to reach the middle part of the ocean. The last time, we visit our province and a kind fisherman let us hop in his boat since we need to travel to another barangay, we enjoyed riding on it cause we reached another barangay within 10 minutes. It's a fun experience, to those people living in cities then it's time to take a break and tried those modes of transportation I indicate above, it's fun to hop on and experience it even once in life.

This post is my entry to a writing contest posted on Hive PH related to biyaheng Pinoy, it's sad that I can't provide my own images to demonstrate what's my experience. However, those images I pasted are edited by me on Canva. I hope you'll like this entry of mine.