And so the recent foiled attempt to steal the intriguing Bahi treasure has become part of the regular menu for inuman, drinking sessions, where people just freely dish out what they’ve seen and heard. One woman in such a session where I was had more to tell than anyone else because she actually lived in that place in Bahi. “We could go there if you like, but best to wait for low tide. The top part of that lamesang bato actually surfaces during kati, extreme low tide”, she said.
Oh yeah?
So we accepted the surprise invite and agreed to meet at 4:00 p.m. the next day to check the site, hopefully to satisfy everyone’s growing curiosity.
It was drizzling, not an ideal time for going out but we went ahead anyway. Three curious women and myself. “The rain will cause the wawa to be murky, we may not see the lamesa, but let’s go”, the woman’s mother said. Bahi is just five and a half minutes away by tricycle from my barangay.
Her daughter and son-in-law met us. He immediately started rattling about how familiar he was with that bato, rock because it was his favorite spot as a young boy for catching crabs and shrimps that thrived in those waters. That rock was like a magnet for different forms of marine life clinging to it or breeding around it, he said.
“If I had known in those days that it could be hiding something, I could have started my own digging, a little at a time, you know, every time I went there. Just a little at a time That’s many years ago, we should have been rich by now”, he joked.
“What does that rock look like?”
“It’s round, about 2 ½ meters in size. I wouldn’t liken it to a table because it is not flat, but curved outward, shaped like a type of mushroom or bread even”.
As the slight drizzle continued, we soon found ourselves traversing a muddy and slippery path on the bank of the cloudy brackish wawa. “Some diggings have also been carried out over there sometime ago”, our male guide pointed to a muddy area by the bank, “but I don’t think they found anything. Once, somebody came with a metal detector but recovered only a rusty vehicle plate, very old”.
Naturally growing sasahan and mangroves thrive there, then we stopped in a clearing. Then our guide pointed a finger.
“It’s submerged right there”, he tossed a pebble on the water. “There! You can't see it now, but the water will clear up maybe after a week, then you could see it clearly”.
The women in our company gazed at the pinpointed spot quietly as if engaged in their own private musings about the buried treasures that lie under.
“So a shipping rope was tied to that treasure object by the men who attempted to remove it the other night?”
In addition to the shipping ropes now in police safekeeping, the guide also found on the beach a device made of iron tied to a small rope that the men also apparently left behind.
“Yes. Let’s go to where the wawa exits so you could see traces of what happened on the beach side”.
The mouth of the estuary ran towards the south. It was just knee-deep so we crossed it and reached the beach area. “You can still see the rope marks here”, he said.
Device tied to a rope left behind during the incident.
“Imprint is still here! There were actually two vessels pulling those ropes, I was told by my kumare”, our guide’s mother-in-law said pointing to the sand prints. “One was a tugboat pulling with a rope towards the northern side. The other was a barge on the southside. Here you could see from the imprints the direction of the rope, over there towards north you could see how the bushes were cleared by the strength of the other rope as it was being pulled”.
The police earlier maintained it was not possible to see anything towards the sea because the night was pitch black and the vessel/s were not lighted.
“How far is this from the treasure site?”
“Must be more than 150 meters from this end”, said the guide. “You know it’s getting more scary here now as we see more and more strange people moving about at nightime. I think they will try again”.
Farther south one could see from where we stood the Marinduque airport’s seaside. Farther north lies the Cawit Port.
“But what do you think is with that rock, where is the real treasure?”
“I think the idea is just to move that rock. Once they succeed in moving it, it will be much easier to find out what it really is. Is it a lid or what, and that could lead to more secrets being found. I just hope there are no explosives planted there by whoever placed it”, he said.
“But shouldn’t the national government be involved now to resolve this, to put an end to all these?”, our guide asked before we parted as the rain seemed to be getting more steady.“Yeah, right you are, para nganing mas matuwid ‘yun ano?”, I said.
The site is about 40 meters away from the highest tide on the west side.
