This Week in Batangas (October 24 to 30, 2016)

The CalacAtchara Festival is a fete of atchara (chutney) and all that makes up a typical town fiesta—parade, street dance, contests, fairs, merriment, fireworks, and more food—annually celebrated in Calaca, Batangas. CalacAtchara is a blend of two words — Calaca and Atchara. Calaca is a first-class municipality in Batangas. Atchara is Filipino appetizer made of grated unripe papaya, vinegar, onion, garlic and ginger, among others. It is Calaca’s favorite and famed pasalubong product.

The festival was meant to revive, showcase, and reinvent different versions of atchara. CalacAtchara also serves as a thanksgiving to the town’s patron saint, St. Raphael, the Archangel. As a sign of gratitude for the great year, Calaqueños open their house and shares traditional fiesta food like menudo, puchero, afritada, embutido and morcon, with atchara as a side dish as expected.

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A procession for the CalacAtchara Festival can be witnessed at 5:00PM to happen at Poblacion Barangays. This will be capped with a fireworks display at the patio of the St. Raphael Parish Church. To follow at 7:00PM is the Mayor’s Night Concert to be held at the New Activity Site.

The white-shirt wearing party people will rave once more as Barakoland makes a comeback and turns the city from bleached to colored. Dubbed as Barakoland 4, the rave party will be held on October 29 (Saturday) at Dayton Food Park, the newest food park along Ayala Highway, Lipa.

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Calaca is more than two hours from Manila. It is accessible via Southern Luzon Expressway (SLEX) exiting to Tagaytay route, and SLEX-ACTEX-STAR exiting to Lipa City via Cuenca Road. In between catching the CalacAtchara Festival, tourists may want to do a quick tour and experience the old-town feel. The almost 200-year-old town has several classic heritage pieces—St. Raphael, the Archangel Church, which took 10 years (1841-1861) to build; century-old parish convent; old municipal hall; Charles Huan De La Salle Training Center; and respective ancestral houses of de Leon, Dr. Mariano Marella, Col. Timoteo Marella, Capt. Ireneo Arriola, and Former Mayor Ignacio Ilagan.

SM City Lipa is on a pre-holiday sale from October 21 to 30, 2016. Shoppers may avail of discounts up to 70 percent.

It’s customers’ eyeball time with their online sellers at Fashion Avenue and Lifestyle Boutique Store. Online sellers have united and taken a shot at selling in an old-fashioned way. Located at CM Recto Ave (Lipa Bayan along new McDonalds’), the all-in-one fashion and lifestyle hub retails bags shoes, beauty and skin care products, and arts and crafts.

With factors like the monsoon, inter-tropical convergence zone, and low pressure area, rainy days are here to stay.

Tourists and festival enthusiasts who want to catch the culminating activities of CalacAtchara Festival can expect a generally good weather.

The temperature for the week will range between 32°C and 22°C, with a real feel of 38°C and 23°C. The cloudy skies will likely bring rains. Showers and thunderstorms can be expected to permeate the Batangas skies. But a ray of sunshine is seen to prevail on Monday, October 24, with 20 percent to 60 percent chance of rain that is likely to last from 1 to 1.5 hours.

The rest of the week will have a 24 to 60-percent chance of rain showers and thunderstorms that could last for an hour. With Christmas fast approaching, it can be noticed that the sun has started to set earlier from 5:30 PM to 6:00 PM.