How to Get to Manaoag

I received two inquiries in one day about getting to Manaoag en route to Baguio City both by public and private transportation and I tried to answer them both as best I could based on my experience in going there several times in the past.

Believe me I used to wing my way there sometimes driving all by myself through lonely provincial rough roads — but the last time I went there was about 12 years ago. I have, since 1997 gone instead to the cloistered nuns of the Convent of Mary Consolatrix in the middle of nowhere in Angin, Naguilian, La Union every time I would have some intense need for prayers to be answered. In the Philippines we call this “matinding pangangailangan” But that’s another “alternative to Manaoag” option that I will tell you about in the future.

But before I tell you that “How to Get to Manaoag” details that I actually researched on the web — because I happen to be a really helpful person — you first have to read all about the first time I went there, which explains why folks feel the need to make a pilgrimage to the out-of-the-way town of Manaoag, usually on the occasion of their trip to Baguio City.

In 1981 we first heard of the miraculous granting of petitions from folks who made the pilgrimage to Manaoag to visit the Lady of the Holy Rosary whose image is enshrined in this remote town in Pangasinan, which site it is said was chosen by Mary herself 400 years ago, when Spain ruled the Philippines. The word Manaoag has as its root word, tawag or call, so manawagan can roughly be translated to “to announce,” or “to call.”

This was the Call of the Lady of Manaoag that we heard about: that folks who went to Manaoag would get their prayers answered and the “repayment” would be merely to return one more time to say thank you.

As a teenager, I thought this a reasonable proposition. After all, on the first trip one makes the request, even impossible requests or prayers are welcome, and the second trip would beto say “thank you” while at the same time making another request.  Thus a never-ending cycle of visits would commence. For no request has ever been deemed so difficult that the Lady of Manoag would not grant it.

So off we went in 1981, my mom and I and a few few family friends, the Fuenteses and Picazos. I had taken only one entrance exam for college to apply for a quota course in UP Diliman during the time when one could only choose one course and one campus. If I was not accepted as a B.S. Industrial Engineering freshman, I would be in a lot of trouble. It was already to late too apply for Ateneo or La Salle. I so wanted to go to UP that I did not care to apply anywhere else.

Exam results were usually out by March, but the University of the Philippines was taking extra long that year. The results actually came out in April. My mom was hoping I would apply for her alma mater, University of Santo Tomas, and become a doctor, as applications were still open at that time because UST accepted applicants on a per college basis and not university-wide. So she went to Manaoag to ask specifically that I NOT be accepted into UP because she feared “I would become a communist,” because “UP people become God-less.”

My specific petition was to be accepted at UP. Guess who’s petition was granted?

Thus it was only I who felt the need to go back to say “thank you.” Of course my mom had to accompany me during the semestral break in November of 1981. After all, I was still a 16-year old in need of company.

This is why Manaoag is so popular, so visited by folks in need of miracles.

And somehow, folks feel that it is best to visit Manaoag en route to Baguio from Manila or on the way back, which is why I get queries on this blog about a remote town in Pangasinan province.

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