36 HOURS IN ANTIQUE: IN THE PLACE OF SMALL RIVERS

Antique, that long sliver carved out of the west coast of the island of Panay, contains all the glorious DNA of our country's history, its sorrows and tragedies but also its legends and glorious triumphs.

- LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL

Its mountains, so closely bound to the sea, together create the idea of an implacable, all-powerful nature. Indeed, Antique, then as now, is a roughhewn paradise, that must have dearly perplexed the first Spanish friars who landed in Antique to seek souls and bring them to Christianity in 1581. It still is full of strange flora and fauna that give the places their picturesque names—the plump, placid ants called hamtik, the spiny ongon thorn, and the valley of the anini or the place of small rivers.

Today, that same untamed wilderness has the breakout potential for a Gen Z refuge and the unmistakable appeal of the new adventure traveler—the kind who likes to trek up to view a sunrise from a different peak every day of the week. Antique has plenty of these mountaintops and some of them are the highest in the country.

It's the less-traveled destination of the West Visayas, although it's an easily accessible 2.5 hours away from Iloilo City through superb roads. There are two routes to reach it: the first, by a well-built avenue that follows the coastline and another, up a winding road, shored up by riverstones, through the mountains, that has the air of Kennon Road.

Antique, in fact, is to Iloilo what Sagada is to Baguio City. The province even has its own rice terraces nestled in the hills. It is, however, entirely unblemished by roadside signs or softdrink or telco ads. It has a basic agricultural economy in sugar cane and cacao, some rice and coconuts.

There is a coastline that features a sea that rages to the very edge of the fishing villages. There are no breakwaters to cut the fury of the waters.

This kind of unforgiving terrain is not surprisingly peopled by heroes, led by Gen. Leandro Fullon and his officers who waged an effective guerrilla war against the Spanish and the Yanks.