Agora Breakfast: Cagayan De Oro Port

Aha! I saw food! The light smoke coming from dishes being served at many of those stalls told me those must have been some kind of soup or the likes of it. Whoa! I dreamed of Tinola, so I crossed the street to check it out. Argh, all of them had tinola yes, but not really the kind of fish I would go crazy about. Most were the smaller thorny kinds. Not the usual tanguigue or bariles or mamsa that I always see in Cebu. But something else caught my attention.


Some port workers (not those in the photo above) were hubbed eating at one stall and all seemed to be enjoying something piping hot in bowls. I peeped in to see that the “event” was “nilat-an baka” (nilagang baka in Tagalog; not sure how this is in English, beef broth?). I got one of course, thinking I’ll just sip all the soup I can, to push any traces of beer in my veins away, with meat as an “added attraction” to last the tummy until Camiguin! Alas, it automatically came with a plateful of rice hehe, so who was I to say no, right?! I am not a glutton for nothing, y’know!

Oh, finishing my soup (about the same time those porters seem to have scampered altogether to the port's entrance for an arriving trikeload of passengers), I calmly said “coke manang please”. Her attention still on those running porters, she attempted to give me a stick of Hope Cigarettes. I smiled and said “Coke ‘nang, Coke, sakto, 8ounce, 12ounce” and she chuckled while returning the stick of Hope into its pack, then went to fetch a bottle of coke. While she placed the bottle on my table, she jokingly talked to herself (for me to hear of course), looking at the ceiling saying “nilat-an painit sa tiyan, dayon inuman og coke, asa ka pa”! To which I answered with “ay pagbuot kay certified adik ni sa coke”! And we both laughed.

Did you notice the table covers in the pictures above? Yep, they call it “mantel” in this country. But boy was I so happy and contented recognizing the logo! Look at it again! Yeah, me too hehe. I did not notice as I did not give it much attention, until I was already downing my bottle of coke! Manang told me the folks from Coke gave them that sometime ago! Ah my biases coming out again, CBPI should pay me na for this hehe!


Here is a view of the entrance to the terminal – as I sat in the shack drinking my coke! Nope, those guys in golden yellow overalls are not aircraft mechanics nor cruise-ship enginemen. They are the porters I talked about above!

Let’s go enter the pier lest the fascraft leave me behind! That’s next!


To read the chronology of stories on this trip, click the following article numbers:
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52