FROM the fork of the Manila East Road/Rizal – Laguna National Highway, where the Baranggay Hall (Halayhayin), a Petron Station and a Seven Eleven Convenience Store face each other in a triangle, to our farm’s gate is about seven (7) kilometers.
The población of Sitio Bugarin as well as the Rizal-Laguna boundary are between kilometer post 68 – 69.
On the way up you will pass on the left an Ayala low - cost housing project, then on the right a new market, then fruit stalls and mango orchards.
Hardly noticeable on the right is an old subdivision. About a kilometer up, is Ponte Verde, a new Sta. Lucia Realty subdivision (launched on November 29, 2020), followed by an LPG depot.
Then, you will enter a big, big curve, where a bamboo farm with a restaurant, nestles in the valley to the right. This is also were the Malaya power station high voltage line crosses the road and the hills.
At the top of the curve is the best view of the Laguna da Bay. Government has been building a view deck amidst the food and fruit stalls.
A kilometer before our farm and just before the only notable bridge is the entrance on the left to phase one of the Pililla Wind Farm.
These are twenty – seven (27) windmills stretching along the first ridge of the Sierra Madres all the way to Baranggay Sampaloc, Tanay.
These were visible to the naked eye all the way from the Antipolo Teresa Zigzag and all along the Pililla portion of the lakeshore highway.
As you proceed up and southward, you will notice on the left another line of nine (9) windmills which pass right behind our farm.
Just before and across the street from our farm is a new subdivision, “Grand Villas East” developed by Brilliant Construction. Our farm has a two hundred and ninety meters, wide frontage on the left side.
After the earlier mango orchards (about three to four kilometers before, down from and northwest of us), our farm is the most vegetated property on both sides of the road.
Our property is one kilometer deep. Its tail reaches up to the phase two Windmill Service Road.
Less than a kilometer farther up and southeast are the highway entrances to both these and the barangay road that goes southwest towards Mount Sembrano (the highest nearby peak and the site for the future phase three) and the tip of the Jala – Jala Peninsula, as well as northwest to the nine windmills of phase two, the deep well of the Pililla Water District and the future Pililla Botanical Garden.
From our farm, you have three scenic views: northeast are the phase two windmills and the higher ridges of the Sierra Madres, to the north are the phase one windmills stretching all the way to Tanay and to the west are the eastern and northern sides of Laguna da Bay, Talim Island and only on a clear day, in the distance, Corregidor and Mt. Mariveles on Bataan.
Beyond the Sitio Bugarin población are the best scenic views of the southern part of Laguna de Bay, the Caliraya power plant and the two volcanoes, Mounts Makiling and Banahaw.
Whenever we go to our farm, I always enter the phase two Windmill service road and visit the ‘buntot’ of our farm.
We always take a U turn at the view deck and take a few miniuytes to admire the view.
Then we pass by the meat shops and buy ‘bulalo’, T bone, etc … , as well as ‘kesong puti’. We buy fruits and plants along the highway (Pililla, Tanay and Baras) on the way home.
We don’t always enter the phase one windmill service road.
However, on Holy Thursday of 2016, we did. The entrance was wider than four lanes.
It was in order to allow the articulated (three sections plus tractor) trailers that carried the windmill towers to maneuver.
The road was partly gravel and partly concrete. There was a tourist center and there were hundreds of tourists.
There must have been almost a thousand bicycles, motorcycles and four wheeled vehicles, both parked and moving.
At the end of the row of twenty - seven windmills, the road did not end.
Since we were using a then brand - new Nissan Navarra Pickup and there were dozens of sedans ahead of us, we just continued until we came out in Baranggay Sampaloc, Tanay, near Camp Capinpin, Erap’s resort and the Regina shrine.
When ECQ was imposed on Tuesday, March 17, 2020, the government closed phase 1 to tourists.
Phase 2 was not previously open to tourists, however, there are fantastic photo ops that can be had from outside the private security perimeter.
So, the tourists and fruit and souvenir stalls shifted to phase two. Two months ago, the barangay closed the national highway entrance to the phase two service road.
The tourists shifted to a mile long stretch of highway before our property. Our farm has high hills and tall trees (including five hundred mahogany trees that we planted since my eldest son’s graduation from college in 1993.), and so the view of the windmills and the bay from the highway are obstructed.
Even before the April 5 and 12 ECQ’s, as well as the March 22 ‘Bubble’, the authorities chased the tourists and cleared the fruit stalls.
That is the Total Stupidity of the IATF and Government.
There are at least a dozen kilometers of ‘social distance’ from end to end of the twenty - seven and nine windmills.
There are a thousand hectares of private and public land for a thousand tourists to spread out in.
The Easterlies are now blowing from the Pacific. Our altitude is only half of Tagaytay’s at about 360 meters. However, that is good enough in comparison with the summer heat of the low lands and the urban centers.
Why can’t poor tourists who can only afford fuel for small motorcycles and a few fruits for ‘pasalubong’ be allowed the ‘essential’ space and fresh air?