TOURISM

Known as the 'Conscience of Bicol', the 425 year old settlement established by the Spanish conquistadores in the heart of Bicol, which is known as Iriga City today, is among the few fast growing urban centers in the Bicol Region.

Nestled at the foot of the fabled Mt. Iriga (4,823 feet high), Iriga City's population of about 120,000 is one of Bicol Region's cleanest and most hospitable city.

Rising some 4,823 feet above sea level, Mt. Iriga is an ecotorism park which offers not only a panoramic view of the entire Camarines Sur, but also home of different endemic species especially 'Rafflesia Irigaense', the one of smallest species of Rafflesia, the largest and rarest flower known for it's disturbing smell and crackling sound.

Near the city’s central business district, the springs at Masosu in San Isidro, as well as the other springs like Butawan, Balaigang, and Guilid provide clear water for drinking and recreation. At barangay San Nicolas, the country’s oldest bus transportation company has collected its various memorabilia in an American plantation-house type Transportation Museum that is the first and only one of its kind in the country. Overlooking the city proper is the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto, a man-made monument to a man’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. A garrison during the Japanese-time, the grotto is the traditional culminating point for an annual first-harvest festival every eleventh day of February of each year.

Called Tinagba, an ancient Bikol word meaning “to gather the first sheaf of harvest”, the festival becomes a crazy-quilt of sights and sounds as carabao-drawn carts, laden with the freshest of farm produce, wind through the city’s main streets in a caravan that becomes a merry mix of the sacred and the profane. Here, Agta natives perform their ethnic dances to the beat of a bamboo pole called called “basisi” or a wooden gong, called “balalong”:, while there, lowlanders bring their offerings of grains, fruits and vegetables which later would be distributed to hospitals, jails and orphanages.

Another event worth-waiting for aee the various Passion Plays staged by youth ther=ater groups during the Lenten season along the streets of the ciuty; while in December, young girls clad in anachronistic Mexican costumes, recreate the search of the ancient shepherds for the birthplace of the child Jesus in Bethlehem in a song-and-danmce paean called Pastores A Belen. Truly, in Iriga, the sun is always rising in a year round celebration of life, just like the meaning of the old name of its prominent mountain, sumagang.

THE CITY TOURISM OFFICE

City Colosseum, City Hall Complex
Iriga City 4431, Camarines Sur, Philippines
Tel nos: (054) 299-1953
Facsimile: (054) 655-0329