Cagayan de Oro City

Cagayan de Oro City is the gateway of the world into northern Mindanao – at least. This Philippine city resembled something close to a quaint, rural town just a few years back. In recent days though, Cagayan de Oro – or CDO, as most of the other Pinoys are wont to call it – has experienced a rather startling makeover, pushing the bar between a rural-urban hybrids, where downtown certainly looks the part while the suburbs are the most secluded gated subdivisions one could ever try trekking to.

A simple jeep ride is enough to demonstrate this fact. From the downtown divider Divisoria, a jeep en route to the airport takes you up Carmen Hill, a sprawling mini-mountain with impressive scenery and natural formations such as the Macahambus Gorge and Adventure Park in the baranggay of Lumbia. Nearby is the Ateneo de Cagayan college of Agriculture, which can give you a view of expansive tracts of land geared towards the development of agri-tech expertise in the country.

Golden city, golden people

It’s been said that the Kagay-anons are one of the nicest folks in the Philippines, and that’s not just a myth. Nor is it an exaggeration, since the people here can be friendly to a fault.

It’s actually one of the more colorful ground zero for the many cultures in the Philippines (you will see Christians, Catholics, Muslims, foreigners and various mestizos in and around the city in equal concentrations).

There’s also the peace and order situation in the Despite its close proximity to the more notoriously turbulent areas of the Philippines, Cagayan de Oro maintains a relatively tension-free environment where one can usually safely walk the streets, taho vendors sing in the streets, and almost everybody closes up shop after ten or eleven in the evening, with a few exceptions.

And the city itself is as heartwarmingly cozy as the people, teeming with people-friendly parks and shopping centers. Gaston Park, right beside the Saint Augustine Cathedral in downtown CDO, is one of such parks, where anybody can just sit back and relax up to the wee hours of the morning (although that isn’t really encouraged). If you’re out to do a little bit of shopping, the various malls throughout the city are readily available to cater to your needs.

Extreme sports, anyone?

More than the CDO lechon, more than the sunshiny friendly people, Cagayan de Oro’s become infamous throughout the country as the premiere whitewater rafting destination in the Philippines. Although whitewater rafting outfitters have been running the Cagayan river circuit since the 1990s, the tourism picked up after President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo gave the rapids a go in 2003.

The river boasts of a twenty-three rapid count ranging from levels I to IV, the ceiling of most manageable whitewater rapids. River tours run throughout the year given good enough weather conditions, and vary in difficulty in the wet and dry seasons.

But rafting vacations aren’t the only things CDO has to offer. Several other spots, like the Macahambus Gorge and Adventure Park, give thrill-seekers a chance to test the limits of their nerves. The sky bridge alone is enough to give agoraphobic people panic attack. The park offers rapelling services, and guests can also explore the Macahambus cave, or for that ultimate adrenaline rush, ride the Zip Line – a hanging slide of more than a hundred feet of high-tension cables strung up a hundred and fifty feet from the bottom of the Macahambus ravine.