Pakol Festival 2018

Santa Catalina – Negros Oriental

The municipality of Santa Catalina celebrated the Pakol Festival 2018 under blue sky in front of thousands of spectators not only from the south of Negros but from all over the Central Visayas region. The festival is since many years one of the most colorful events in the festival-calendar. The Pakol Festival in the municipality of Santa Catalina is celebrated annually in April. Santa Catalina is famous for their pakol, special type of banana with seeds inside, which drew attention to the wild monkeys from the mountains.

Back in the old days, wild monkey would somehow roam around from the mountains to the town center of Santa Catalina. The people didn’t mind for they enjoyed watching these adorable creatures. But there were times when they would destroy belongings, steal harvests and caused trouble to the municipality. The farmers and the town’s people decided to harvest some of the pakol banana and feed these wild creatures. Naturally, it worked and peace among nature and mankind was solved.

Pakol Festival 2018 Streetdancing and Showdown

Just after lunch, under the burning sun, the street dancing started. Everybody saw some well-prepared contingents telling the story of the festival. Surely, everybody was once again fascinated by the “wild” monkeys, which just did what they could do best, being unpredictable and funny.

After a short breather the showdown of the Pakol Festival 2018 started around 4pm with some speeches, prayers and the national anthem, before the plaza turned into the stage for the contingents. Once again, the dancers Santa Catalina could pull off another outstanding performance, making the audience cheering, laughing and just enjoying themselves.

As you can see in the pictures and our short video, our trip to the Pakol Festival 2018 was a lot of fun. We have to thank the municipality of Santa Catalina and the Tourism Office for having us there. Over the years of out trips to the municipality we made many friends there. See you all again at Buglasan 2018 and surely at the Pakol Festival 2019.