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The Wild is Closer to Home at the Cebu Safari and Adventure Park

Finally open after months of excited buzz, the new destination offers a number of up-close animal attractions, adventure rides, and a true sense of wonder.

There was a busy procession of cars on the national highway as we headed up north to the Cebu Safari and Adventure Park. After all, people were busy with their Tuesday morning commute.

It was a bit different for our group that morning, though. As we turned on a narrow road off the main highway in Carmen, the concrete buildings and storefronts soon gave way to trees, farm lands and the occasional cold spring.

We passed some abandoned chicken coops, and the day’s host Honey Loop pointed out that this marked the beginning of the Lhuillier’s property. It turned out to be expansive, with a number of livestock and produce planted on the land. Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Jaime Picornell shares, “He actually wanted to be a farmer when he was young,” referring to Michel Lhuillier.

With that history in mind, it seemed only natural that Michel would venture into something like the Cebu Safari and Adventure Park. Actually, the buzz of his personal animal collection had been circulating social groups in Cebu for years. When the opening of a fully developed safari in the north was announced, it inevitably caused some excitement.

The main rotunda of the Cebu Safari is punctuated with a fountain that features sculptures of the various species of wildlife on the grounds.

In the Making

That, then, leads us to today. Philippine Star columnist and frequent Zee contributor had organized the trip. A selected group from the media and travel agencies were treated to an exclusive preview of the safari.

Hosting us was her son Eduard Loop, the Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer of the Cebu Safari. “Yes, it was his dream to be a farmer,” he confirms when we ask him later about Jaime Picornell’s anecdote. “But his father told him that there’s no money in farming,” he adds with a laugh.

The cheetahs move fluidly as they make their way through the enclosure, looking for shade from the hot day.

Of course, the eventual success of Michel’s business ventures later allowed him to chase this dream. He started acquiring properties and explored some farming options. Eventually, his love for animals also started claiming his time and attention.

“We made a masterplan about eight or ten years ago,” Eduard shares, revealing just how long this project has been in the making. “It’s now under the corporation, under the M. Lhuillier Group of Companies. But in the beginning, he did it on his own.”

Borne of this passion for nature and animals, the Cebu Safari and Adventure Park spans 170 hectares, and is currently home to 111 species of wildlife. “We have a few more coming in by the end of April,” Eduard adds. “There’s some white lions, flamingos, four more giraffes, and some other African animals.”

Exploring the Park

We were dropped off by the bus at the Welcome Pavilion, where refreshments were served. The park’s mascots–Bayani, the Philippine saltwater crocodile; Andres, the Visayan warty pig; and Amihan, the African Crown Crane–greeted the group with a dance number.

After a brief talk on the park’s rules and guidelines, we were divided into groups and ushered into trams for a tour of the grounds. 

The zebra-print trams look at home in the greenery, while actual zebras dine on the shrubbery.

First up was the African Savanna. The tram drove through the rugged terrain, while zebras, wildebeests, waterbucks and other animals grazed as if on their native plains. “This is actually just the first portion,” Eduard told us later. “We’re building something in the back, so the actual ride will be longer. There’s going to be a river.”

A short drive away was the Crocodile Area, where the large creatures lounged around their pool of water. In a separate enclosure to the side, otters and turtles waded in their own ponds. Just outside, the pythons were out to interact with the braver guests.

Even More Animals

Various animal enclosures are distributed throughout the property. The cheetahs, for one, lounged in the shade as we observed them through a thick glass window. The spotted hyenas were out of sight, being nocturnal. We were encouraged to interact with the giraffes though, who weren’t shy about grabbing the branches of trees we offered them.

With their own habitat of rock formations and shrubbery, the meerkats don’t seem shy about the cameras around them.

The meerkats seemed to be naturally curious of cameras, posing as we approached them. The Canopy Trail cuts through the area for the flightless birds, where swans, pelicans and crowned cranes took periodic dips in their ponds. 

The bird show came after lunch, in the training area while the amphitheater is under construction. Eagles, toucans, owls and a number of other avian species performed a series of tricks for the audience.

Afterwards, it was time to visit the Macaw Aviary, where you could get a closer look at the colorful birds. A path from there led to the capybaras, llamas, and emus. Across the path were the Visayan warty pigs, deers, and the black bucks. At the end was the Tiger Turf, arguably one of the most beautiful parts of the tour. The large cats frolicked in their space, eventually playing in their own watering hole to escape the heat.

The Tiger Turf was definitely a favorite stop of the tour. The Safari currently has Bengal and Siberian tigers, which they release alternately throughout the day.

A number of other areas were still under construction, For one, the lions’ area will have caged vehicles driving through the enclosure to offer a closer look. We didn’t mind though–we were glad to have a reason to come back.

The Adventure Park

Of course, the animal attractions aren’t the only things the Cebu Safari has to offer. “We plan to put up a 60-room hotel, but that’ll probably be done by 2020,” Eduard shares. “For 2018, we will have four adventure rides. There’s a 1.3-kilometer zipline, and a bicycle zipline. There’s an obstacle course for team-building activities. And there’s a giant swing, with a 35-meter drop.”

The Canopy Trail is a picturesque trail that leads from the flightless birds’ area to the Macaw Aviary. Eduard shares that Michel had insisted they don’t cut down the large trees on the land.

A lunch buffet is currently included in the introductory rate of P800, and they will soon have more to offer in terms of dining options. La Vie Parisienne will have outlets throughout the property, including their popular pizza and gelato.

Giving Back

With so much to offer, the Cebu Safari is definitely one of the most exciting places to visit this year–but it’s not just all fun. Eduard reveals that they are also dedicated to giving back to their community.

“85% of the workers are from Carmen,” Eduard reveals. “As much as possible, we try to employ locally. We have training programs for them.” The training programs include the Life Science Group, with consultants from Australia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Czech Republic. “They take care of our animal husbandry side, because our local vets have never had the experience to deal with these kinds of animals.”

Lola is one of the two giraffes at the Cebu Safari, who had to be flown in at less than a year old so they would fit in the plane.

The Cebu Safari will also offer special rates for Carmen residents, and have partnerships with local public schools. “Basically we’re trying to educate the youth about nature, the environment, and animals,” Eduard shares. 

In trying to foster the tourism industry in the area, the Cebu Safari encourages locals to open up accommodations, or offer transportation services.

The Legacy

As impressive as the Cebu Safari and Adventure Park is, at its core is a man’s passion project. Eduard himself believes this passion project is more than just a recreational destination for Cebuanos and tourists alike.

“It’s really Michel’s vision,” he says. “The way I see it, this is his dream, and it will be his legacy for sure.”

We’ll definitely be enjoying the Cebu Safari and Adventure Park for years to come. In fact, we’re already planning our next trip.

Toril, Barangay Corte, Carmen, Cebu
For inquiries and reservations, call +63 995 835 3460.

 
 
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Arts & Culture

Kundiman–A Collaboration Between Charles Lahti and Francis Dravigny at the Qube Gallery

by Oj Hofer

“Collaboration is like carbonation for fresh ideas “-Anonymous

Kundiman—drawn from the Filipino tradition of lyrical love songs marked by longing, devotion, and emotional depth—unfolded not merely as an exhibition but as a dialogue between two artists whose practices, though formally distinct, share a common goal: that creation is never singular, never complete, and never entirely one’s own. The word itself carries weight. In the Philippine cultural imagination, kundiman is not passive sentiment but a mode of endurance—a way of loving what one cannot fully possess, of honoring what exceeds one’s grasp—and to name an exhibition after it is to make a claim about the nature of making itself: that art, like the song, is an act of devotion directed toward something larger than the maker’s intention. It is a form that does not declare but lingers; not spectacle, but the quieter and more demanding thing called intimacy.

The collaboration between Charles Lahti and Francis Dravigny operates at what might be called the threshold of language—the place where gesture becomes structure and structure, over time, turns into meaning. Their working relationship is less a merger of two styles than a negotiation between two modes of listening: one drawn to the decisive mark, the other to the patient accumulation of woven form. Lahti’s mark-making is grounded, deliberate, and unambiguous in its commitment to presence; his lines carry the quality of breath, each stroke an event rather than a flourish. Observers familiar with East Asian ink traditions will recognize this sensibility immediately, for in Zen ink practice and Japanese calligraphy, the practitioner does not decide what to draw so much as prepare the conditions under which something may reveal itself—the mark that emerges from this discipline is not decorative but testimonial, evidence of a moment of full attention. Lahti’s work operates within this logic even when the cultural references are Western, and what anchors it is not style but stance: an ethical relation to the act of making that distinguishes genuine presence from the mere performance of spontaneity, a distinction far rarer in contemporary visual art than it ought to be.

“The line is not drawn but revealed—through stillness, breath, and a quality of awareness that the discipline of reduction alone makes possible.”

Dravigny’s woven interventions introduce a different, though deeply complementary, temporality. Where Lahti works in the decisive instant, Dravigny works in accumulation—the slow building-up of material over time—and his use of abacá, a fiber indigenous to the Philippine archipelago, is not incidental. Abacá carries its own history: long harvested by hand, traded across colonial networks, woven into ropes and sails, and more recently reclaimed as a medium of cultural expression, so that to bring it into an art context is to activate this history without necessarily declaring it. In Dravigny’s hands, textile transcends its usual function as background or support and becomes instead an act of preservation—a material archive that holds within its weave the gestures of another artist. This concept, which the exhibition implicitly explores, speaks to something the atelier tradition has long understood: that a work of art may pass through multiple bodies and multiple intentions and still emerge with coherence, provided each maker brings to the passage not assertion but responsiveness, the capacity to receive another’s action and carry it forward without erasing it. Dravigny’s woven interventions propose a similar ethic, made visible rather than concealed.

What Kundiman ultimately stages is not the product of collaboration but its conditions: the particular quality of attention required when one artist’s gesture enters the field of another’s practice, and the willingness to wait that such attention demands. The Japanese aesthetic tradition names this interval ma—the generative pause, the charged space in which meaning gathers before it resolves into form—and the exhibition’s restraint is precisely its argument. There is no excess, no spectacle, no rhetorical gesture toward significance, only a sustained attentiveness to process that runs counter to the dominant logic of contemporary exhibition-making, in which legibility is prized and impact must be immediate. Kundiman refuses this, trusting the viewer to do the work of attending, and in this refusal it finds its deepest kinship with Zen aesthetics: the discipline of reduction, the clarity of intention, the respect for what is essential over what is merely present.

“What Kundiman proposes is more radical than most exhibitions dare: that the self, in the act of making, becomes temporarily permeable—open to the gesture, the material logic, the devotion of another.”

The concept of interbeing—rooted in Buddhist philosophy and carrying the understanding that nothing arises independently, that every form is the result of conditions and every maker is in part made by what they make—finds in this exhibition its material proof. What was created here does not belong to one hand alone. It emerges in the space between, where gesture is received, transformed, and returned; where material listens and form responds and meaning unfolds not as conclusion but as continuation. The exhibition ends. The dialogue does not. This is the space between hands: where making becomes meeting, and where interbeing quietly, insistently gives rise to form.

Charles Lahti with his latest works—layering print with bandana textiles to create tactile, hybrid surfaces where image, pattern, and material converge.

Francis Dravigny in his Cebu studio—transforming abacá and found materials into layered, sculptural weavings.

A wall of interbeing—where weave, gesture, and form dissolve into quiet harmony and non-duality.

A flat surface transformed into a quiet weave—drawing the eye inward, where structure softens into stillness and resonates with Zen practice.

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Arts & Culture

Kundiman After Dark: Traditional 19th Century Filipino Musical Genre Continues to Inspire

by Kingsley Medalla

The Kundiman is a traditional 19th-century Tagalog musical genre that served as a profound source of inspiration for many sophisticated, classically trained artists. The name is derived from the Tagalog phrase “kung hindi man,” literally translating to “if it were not so.” These musical pieces were often performed as poignant love songs characterized by smooth, flowing melodies containing emotional depth. Originating as a serenade in poetic Tagalog lyrics, it features a minor-to-major key progression expressing longing, devotion, patriotism, and a yearning for freedom.

Sine Pop, a boutique theater in a 1948 post-war heritage house located in Cubao, Quezon City, serves as a charming venue for cultural events and intimate performances with a small ensemble. Recently hosting Kundiman After Dark, a recital honoring the legacy of Nicanor Abelardo (1893–1934), a highly esteemed Filipino composer and pianist hailed as the “father of the sonata form in the Philippines” and a master of the art of the Kundiman. Carlson Chan, founder of Sine Pop, clarifies their unique model: the performances are open to the public and are, as such, complimentary, as its primary focus is to promote the performing artists per se.

The performances featured beloved Kundiman classics including Mutya ng Pasig (1926), Naku… Kenkoy (1930), and a personal favorite, Bituing Marikit (1926). These musical pieces were brought to life through the solo acts and live vocals of tenor Erwin Lumauag, Japanese violinist Shiho Takashima (who has since made the Philippines her permanent residence), and the renowned composer, pedagogue, and pianist Augusto Espino.

“Nasaan Ka Irog,” written in 1923, drew inspiration from a romantic tale shared by Nicanor Abelardo’s friend, who went overseas leaving behind his beloved in the Philippines. Years after, this man eventually became a doctor and, upon his return, discovered that the love of his life had been married to someone else. He also learned that the letters he had sent were never delivered to her, as they were kept by the doctor’s family, secretly away from her. A classic case of unrequited love. Kundiman serves as the heart and soul and the pinnacle of Filipino musical artistry.

Violinist Shiho Takashima and pianist Augusto Espino

Tenor Erwin Lumauag

Art patrons; Pacita Agoncillo Sode, Marilou Khan Magsaysay, Patricia Cepeda-Sison and this writer Kingsley Medalle

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Arts & Culture

Art Beat: Scenes From the Manila Art Fair 2026

photography by Doro Barandino

“Art is unpredictable and goes in different directions. I have no idea. I would rather live the present moment.” —Bencab, National artist of the Philippines.

Vinta by Protegeri, collaboration art piece by Leeroy New, Solenn Heuseff and Vito Selma

Q&A with interior decorator and jewellery designer Doro Barandino

Which of the participating art galleries had the most unified and exciting theme?
Leon Gallery had the most amazingly put-together collection. Though the gallery engaged various artists, the overall visual effect felt like one unified theme. Leon Gallery used a sack-like cloth (most likely raw linen) as the background for the booth, and it brought the collection together. It had an old-world feel in a chaotic setting.

Who were the artists that were the most visually engaging?
The works of Carlo Tanseco were definitely my favorite. The artist used an eye chart (Snellen chart) as the background for the image of Dr. Jose Rizal giving us the middle finger—such an “in your face” message. The concept of our national hero as a modern-day provocateur was a wake-up call to everyone. Very subversive and underground material. I was also attracted to the works of Japanese artist Tadashi Kogure; they’re very architectural.

Was the choice of venue and its layout helpful in engaging the whole art vibe?
What I noticed was that the masters like Juan Luna, Fernando Amorsolo, and Fernando Zóbel still attracted the most viewers at the art fair. People are naturally drawn to their masterful strokes and historical significance, or perhaps these artworks are not readily accessible for public viewing. Or maybe those booths that carried the masters’ works were strategically positioned right after the registrar.

The choice of venue at Center One was a good move—it created a total art vibe. Manila Art Fair remains the premier art fair in the country today, showcasing the finest modern and contemporary art while offering curated projects and immersive installations.

The Standard by Thai artist Pitchapa at the Triangular durational, performance art.

Bato Bato sa Langit by Filipino artist Carlo Tanseco

Stocking Proportions Menumpuk Proporsi by Indonesian artist Labadiou Piko

Untitled by Indonesian artist Yunizar

Filipiny, wool tapestry by national artist of the Philippines,Federico Aguilar Alcuaz.

Untitled by German artist Valentin Elias Renner

Interior decorator and jewellery designer Doro Barandino is also a regular contributor for zee.ph

 

 

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