Amaia Scapes Cabanatuan

Considered as a bountiful province – a gateway to the North, Nueva Ecija’s sprawling and varied geological features such as plains and mountainsides have made it the ideal location for the sustenance of life. Consequently, the province is known for its agricultural products and agrarian lands. Hailed as the Rice Granary of the Philippines, Nueva Ecija is known to be the province that produces the largest rice yield in the country. Rice, an ubiquitous Filipino food staple that is consumed from breakfast to dinner, is the province’s main source of commercial and monetary resource. Cabanatuan City, the prominent center of trade and commerce in the province is rather popular for being home to more than thirty-thousand tricycles and thus earning itself the designation of being the Tricycle Capital of the Philippines. As the province is bordered by Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac, Pangasinan, Nueva Vizcaya and Aurora, it has since been known as a melting pot of diverse Filipino ethnicities in the Philippines with its inhabitants speaking a range of dialects from Tagalog, Kapampangan to bits of Ilonggo. Nueva Ecija has slowly and progressively seen a steady influx of tourists over the years owing to its myriad of festivals that occur annually and its abundance of natural wonders. Although Nueva Ecija has a series of festivals yearly, none of them are as popular as the Taong Putik Festival of Aliaga wherein local devotees drench themselves in mud and grime at the crack of dawn to ask for alms and candles from the town folks, emulating the practices of St. John the Baptist.