Solsona

jgl 020,
originally uploaded by jgluz71.

This is dusk heading back into Solsona. Solsona is just due east of Laoag, the capital of Ilocos Norte province, Philippines. Solsona is where my dad was born and most of his family still resides, his brother in law, his youngest sister's husband the mayor of the town for the last decade I believe. To get to Solsona you follow the national highwway North of Manila, and when you detour to Solsona at San Nicholas you end up at the foot hills of the mountains, where the paved highway turns into dirt road. In these mountains are where the New People's Army use to camp out, now it seems they've headed south to join the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). I thought I could describe Solsona as Hobbiton, idylic, rustic, removed, provincial [the town is up for the National Greenest town award (Not sure if they award these to each class of municipality, but it's an auspicious designation regardless)], but I'd might as well build Nipa huts and paint watercolors of the men and women casting nets or doing some inexplicable thing with unrefined rice. Suffice to say it a small (municipality class 4 don\t know what this means), quiet, mostly agrarian, some of it very beautiful. Solsona is where both my parents have lived since 2004, their quality of life being much better here than what it would be in the States: oweing to all the relatives in close proximity, some just houses away, and the almighty dollar compared to the Philippine Piso.