Trail Riding : Cagayan de Oro's next Extreme Sports Adventure
Mike Banos
April 08, 2008
"You already have the trails and the horses you need to make trail riding a tourism attraction," said Monica "Monette" Rosario-Agbulos following a recent trail ride in Dahilayan, Manolo Fortich, Bukidnon. "All you need is to package it into something unique that tour operators can offer their clients."
Rosario-Agbulos trains horses and riders in dressage and show jumping in Marikina but is also a travel and tours operator. Last March 28-29, she went on her third trail ride in the Mindanao highlands with the Cagayan de Oro Horsemen, a group of horse riding enthusiasts who organize periodic trail rides for its members and guests.
With Monette were hubby Richie and children Bianca, Jed and Rico. Joining them were her brother Ral, wife Betty and children Kyle, Raphael and Gavin. The siblings make it a point to have a joint family vacation at a unique destination anywhere in the country at least once a year.
Including the ten visitors from Manila, a total of 41 riders joined the trail ride which took them from Dahilayan, up to the 'cabin' and through a unique hilltop forest trail in the foothills of Mt Kitanglad which they traversed for an hour and a half single file, with barely room for a single rider and his horse to pass through.
"I thought the kids would complain because we didn't get any sleep at all before we hit the trail since we had to take the early morning flight but no one did and apparently they enjoyed the experience," Monette said at a dinner hosted by former Cagayan de Oro Horsemen President JunVillar and his wife Madet at their residence in Cugman.
Monette had her first trail ride in the Mindanao highlands when she was invited late last year by Jun Miņoza of Cebu. She took not one but two trail rides (Cagayan de Oro and Manolo Fortich, Bukidnon), went white water rafting in the Cagayan River, among other things.
"This latest trail ride is more adventurous, technical harder but the scenery is much better," she noted.
Monette started horseback riding at eight during summer vacations to Baguio with the 'pony boys' of Wright Park. But she only started formal riding lessons when she was 15 at the defunct D'Rossa riding school. These days, she notes the only riding schools left in Metro Manila are the Polo Club and Pook Ligaya Riding Stables along Commonwealth Ave.
If local horsemen ever decide to package their tours for tourism purposes, Monette notes the only competition to the Mindanao Highlands trail rides would be those in Tagaytay and Baguio (Wright Park, Marlboro and Japanese trail) which all feature informal western riding.
But before local riders undertake these, she has a couple of comments and suggestions:
"Your guides have to be trained not only to guide but to tell the stories about the trail to their visitors, especially those who come from afar," she noted. She observed that guides on the Cagayan de Oro trail ride can easily converse in Pilipino and English, unlike their more taciturn counterparts from Bukidnon.
On top of that, she suggests local trail ride tour operators should offer a good package and advertise to get trail riding in the Mindanao Highlands into the mainstream.
"Invite the Koreans," she specified, upon learning of the growing presence of Korean nationals in the region. She noted how vans loaded with Korean tourists would arrive in Wright Park arrive every 30 minutes during the peak season. Korean schools in Baguio have even integrated horseback riding into their curriculum, she added.
"Make it cheap so everybody rides," she advised.
Personally, Monette dreams one day of conducting hippotherapy for special children, which she says only needs a small 20 x 40 meter bullring.
Hippotherapy is a therapy treatment strategy that uses the horse's movement as a means to a treatment goal for clients who have movement dysfunction. It can improve balance, posture, mobility and function and also affect psychological, cognitive, behavioral and communication functions for clients of all ages.
It can be used to treat a wide variety of disorders like autism, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, Down syndrome, traumatic brain or spinal cord injuries, stroke, attention deficit disorders, learning or language disabilities and visual or hearing impairments.
Recently, Cagayan de Oro City Mayor Constantino G. Jaraula pledged to the Cagayan de Oro Horsemen that the city veterinarian's office would allocate 3.5 hectares of its planned mini-stock farm in Barangay Indahag as stables for the horsemen.
"It's still a dream to make it the next adventure sport," said Bobby Cabrera, recently elected president of the Horsemen. Not to mention a possible site for Monette's bull ring offering hippotherapy for special children, one might add.
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