JORDAN, Guimaras, May 18 (PNA) — Various pleasant surprises await visitors to this year’s Manggahan Festival, a celebration not just about exceedingly sweet mangoes, but about giving travelers a chance to peer into things Guimaras can offer since becoming a full-pledged province 23 years ago.
Although the celebration is capped by the giddy All-You-Can-Eat mangoes portion, the islanders are also happy to show anybody around, the inhabitants perhaps one of the most amiable in these rough times.
The crime rate is low, and road accidents rarely happen; but sometimes motorbikes crash into each other.
An agri-trade fair has lined up souvenir items worth bringing back to family and friends such as kasoy (cashew) nuts and bars not available in supermarkets; nutritious banana and sweet potato chips and calamansi products, to name just a few.
Visitors can also buy carefully-handwoven bags made of buri and pandan.
But the star of the show, never failing to captivate even those having very discriminating taste are of course, the mouth-watering mangoes which the 1995 Guinness Book of World Records picked as the sweetest on the planet.
For only P70.00, one can binge on mangoes, without a limit.
Foreign guests, in the past, were observed downing kilos of the fruit in just one sitting. Owing to this, Elena V. Quezon of the provincial economic development office, predicted that this year’s festival may be poised to surpass 2014’s income of P7 million. Quezon believes P10 million is easily achievable.
Guimaras mangoes thrive well under extremely hot and arid conditions. With the El Nino wreaking havoc on other crops, mango trees are anticipated to flower more, and these flowers turn into pea-sized green mangoes.
Manggahan Festival ends on May 22. (PNA)