House Blessing at Pine Hills, Bukidnon
A few days before July 17, 2008, Marissa advised me that there was a Mother Club Rotary Event in “Pine Hills, Bukidnon”. I tried to look the place up on the Internet and couldn’t find anything. I remember the last time I went to Malaybalay and Valencia that there was some kind of National Park that had waterfalls and such and without any real reason assumed the trip was to see some park.
Marissa also advised me that several other Rotarians would be attending along with their Ann’s. As it turns out, I was the only Rotarian Club of Cagayan de Oro member to attend. The rest of the entourage were Ann’s and and son of one of the members.
The lead vehicle was ex-vice mayor of Cagayan de Oro, Tony Soriano’s Fortuner,which was loaded to the max, so one of the other Anns elected to ride with us. We met at McDonald’s Limketkia, on the morning of January 17, 2008, for a quick breakfast before heading out.
From Limketkai Mall it is 30 kilometers to the rurn off to Camp Philips, which is not a military camp as I had thought, but instead it is virtually a town set up by Delmonte to run all their agrigultural endeavors in the area and there were many houses in the camp allocated to junior executives in the company.
It was 13 kilomenters from the main highway to Camp Philips. Then another 17 kilomenters of rough gravel and rock road to Pine Hills, which is not a park, but a subdivision. Here’s a short video of the road to Pine Hills from Camp Phillips.
Tony Soriano had built a house there, essentially out in the middle of nowhere, as a retreat house, a weekend, or vacation house.
The house had two bedrooms downstairs, and a loft, which could be used for a bedroom. There was one CR (comfort room = bathroom) upstairs, and one in each downstairs bedroom, and one additoinal one just off the kitchen. I have a 6-bedroom house and 6 CR’s. This one had bedrooms, all with CRs plus an extra CR, which impressed me at least a little bit. The view from the house was short of spectacular, but impressive all the same.
We were there for the house blessing. A Dominican priest did the blessing. We carried lit candles around the house, following him as he read some prayers and sprinkled Holy Water about the house. You can see the video of the actual blessing, below.
I was advised that they had bought the lot for PHP 1000 per square meter, when it had first opened, but that the price per square meter was now PHP 1500.
One hectare is 10,000 square meters or 100 meters by 100 meters,and is 2.47 acres. I’ll round that off to 2.5 acres per hectare for use in this blog.
The Philippines is considered a developing nation, and it is thought of as a poor country by World International standards, but let’s calculate this out. The current rate of exchange is about 44 pesos to 1 USD.
1500 pesos per square meter comes to about $340,000 USD per hectare, or about $136K USD per acre. And this is out in the middle of nowhere, Bukidnon. Land is not cheap in The Philippines. Which goes a long way in explaining why people buy such small lots.
In other places in The Philippines, I mean rural areas, but nice locations, like with beach-front or ocean side property sell for PHP 5000 per square meter on up to tens of thousands of pesos per square meter. I was just astounded by the price or real estate here.
Despite the fact that Tony Soriano’s house is only 60 Km from Limketkai mall, it takes a good 90 minutes to get there. We averaged about 25 kph from Camp Philips to Pine Hills beause of the rough road.
The location is ideal for reading, introspection, or spending quality time with kids without the distractions of a big and growing metropolis like Cagayan de Oro.
The subdivision has a nice clubhouse for large activities and also a “retreat house” that could easily accomodate a couple of hundred people. There’s also a small fishing pond. Security appeared to be on the serious side. Well-armed, scrutinizing, and they demonstrated they knew how to salute.