Cousin Jai took us on a tour of Guimaras last Tuesday. Guimaras lies just off the coast of Iloilo City. Jai knows the island well, as he has bicycled the circumferential road several times – a day long ride of 75 miles.

We began at a café / gallery where we saw an art exhibit. Iloilo has a lively arts scene.

A church devoted to San Isidro Labrador sits in Navalas, on the northern end of Guimaras. We entered the grounds through this archway.

The church is built of coral blocks. It looks old but is not. A local patron funded its construction between 1880 and 1885, not long before the Philippine Revolution and Spain’s defeat in the Spanish-American War in 1898.

An altar to San Isidro Labrador tells the story of a farmer born around 1070 near Madrid who worked as a young man for a wealthy landowner. Isidro was habitually late to work because he went to church every morning to pray. Yet he still managed to get the fields ploughed.

An angel was observed guiding the plow. This is one of the miracles that led to his canonization in 1622. We know his name in North America from Labrador in Canada!

San Isidro holds a wooden spade. Someone made off with the original, the sexton told us, and though they knew who the someone was, they never found the spade, so a new one was made. Isidro wears a local fiber bag around his neck.

Near by, Roca Encantada (Enchanted Rock) stands on a rocky promontory. It was built in 1910 as a gift from Señor Lopez to his wife Doña Presentacion Hofileña Lopez: a local Taj Mahal.

The house is not open for visitors, but the terraces are.

We look out over the sea to the islands named Siete Pecados or Seven Sins: the reincarnation of seven sisters who disobeyed their father’s command and drowned at sea. An interesting parallel to the Pleiades or Seven Sisters, who also have many stories told about them!

Jai took us next to a wind farm in the interior of Guimaras. Perhaps fifty towers and turbines generate power that is sold to the grid.

At a distance, I didn’t appreciate the size of the towers. If you look carefully, you can see Lina just to the right of the tower, her head above the hills on the horizon.

Two boys walk home under the whooshing of the turbines.

Our last stop – a fruit stand where Guimaras’s fabled mangoes are displayed. Guimaras claims the best mangoes in the Philippines (and perhaps the world?). Its Mango Festival attracts visitors from afar for two weeks in May.