My whole 3rd week of January was swamped with covering the Dinagyang Festival. It got really hectic during the weekend trying to balance my time covering the various events, bonding with school friends, meeting online buddies, preparing photos and videos to be posted ASAP, and catching up on sleep.

Friday – Fluvial Parade, Day 1 of Fireworks Display

I was already awake early morning on Friday to witness the Salvo of a Thousand Drums, a volley of drums world record attempt by Iloilo City. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to arrive on time and missed the whole thing! My whole morning was spent taking a very long breakfast in Blue Jay Deli. I tried one of their sausage meals, which I didn’t like and spent and expensive price for it. Good thing they served great Mango Frappe, so my stay there was quite worthwhile.

Before lunch, me and Junelle went to the Iloilo Dinagyang Foundation Inc. office to get our media passes. We, Iloilo Bloggers, would like to thank the Dinagyang Foundation for giving us media passes to cover the Dinagyang Festival. It’s high time they acknowledge the importance of promoting the Dinagyang online and the influence of bloggers in the online world.

Vince accompanied me during lunch, while waiting for Eric to arrive from Bacolod. At around 3pm, me and Eric were joined by Alvin to cover the Dinagyang Fluvial Procession and Parade in Muelle Loney, in front of the Iloilo Customs House. I was actually more interested in seeing a preview of the costumes of the tribes joining the Dinagyang Ati Contest during the highlight of the Dinagyang Festival.

The Fluvial Parade was very crowded with devotees and photographers flocking the scene. It was quite hard to take photos so I decided to take Eric and Alvin to the third floor of the Iloilo Customs House to take photos of the whole parade from a bird’s eye view.

View more photos of the Dinagyang Fluvial Parade

It was really great being the only ones who thought of it since it is typical in the Dinagyang Festival for photographers to have the same shots/angles because of the great number of photographers and limited spaces to shoot from. Afterwards, we headed to the Iloilo Provincial Tourism Office to claim another round of Media Passes for Iloilo Bloggers. We, Iloilo Bloggers and forum members of Skyscrapercity Iloilo would like to thank the Iloilo Provincial Tourism Office for giving us the opportunity to cover the Dinagyang Festival and promote it online.

In the evening, we took a nice spot at open field at the back of SM City to witness Day 1 of the Luces in the Sky Fireworks Display and Contest. The 10 entries for that day didn’t get a WOW from us, save the last entry (from Bulacan), which eventually got awarded as the winner of the 2 day contest.

View videos and more photos of the Dinagyang Luces in the Sky 2010

The first few months is always the busiest time for the year for me. It starts with spring cleaning my room and pc (that’s already a big task for me since I don’t do it often throughout the year), planning for the year ahead (I don’t like to make resolutions since I can’t keep them, I prefer to made concrete plans), then comes the Ati-atihan Festival in Kalibo and ofcourse, the Dinagyang Festival in Iloilo. After that is covering a series of smaller events like the Paraw Regatta and Jaro Grand Fiesta.

Next up – Kasadyahan Competition and Day 2 of Luces in the Sky