We were indeed going there, or thru there.
On the bus, a so-called 'ordinary' bus, as opposed to the fancy modern 'air-con' variety, an idiosyncratic old single-decker with no glass in the side windows & displayed on the windscreen 'BLESS OUR TRIP', pictures of Our Lady & assorted rosaries, fortunate talismans considering Filipino driving!
Baking hot sunshine, blue sky. A pleasant draft cools my face as bus breezes along.
The sound system is playing a medley of Your Hundred Favourite Hits to the same insistent dance track beat.
Just outside of San Francisco (Philippines), a tiny shanty town, as if on cue, that song comes on...
"You're gonna meet some gentle people there."
I kid you not. It couldn't have been better timed, even with a stopwatch, this fortuitous synchronisation. Such an apposite juxtaposition sure Blew My Mind, to adopt the pithy idiom of the blissed-out sixties hippy in that somewhat better-known American West Coast city.
This was turning into quite a trip & a blessed one indeed.
Beautiful Bougainvillea grows round these parts "Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair..." |
(This Orchid is wild, man,
&, if you're lucky, you might find
some hereabouts)
Post-script
By the way, there are MANY & various San Franciscoes round the world:
Puerto Rico, New Mexico, Texas, Australia, Argentina,
most of them the legacy of Spanish colonialism.
The name refers, of course, to Saint Francis,
Patron Saint of Animals & the Environment.
Who will pay me to visit each & every one of them & sort of COMPARE & CONTRAST? I thought not.
[In case you've forgotten, the famous song is by Scott McKenzie, 1967...]