Along People's Park In Davao - A Wednesday Walk

The People’s Park in Davao City is a cultural theme park which opened in 2007. It was the project of then Mayor Rodrigo Duterte who has now gone on to become the president of the Philippines.

The 4-hectare park used to be an old sports complex with a 6-lane dirt oval track, a soccer field, 2 tennis and 1 basketball courts and an olympic sized swimming pool. However, neglect and disuse had rendered the complex in such deplorable state due to insufficient funds to maintain it. In 2005 the green light to convert the old sports complex into a theme park was given and the construction began and completed after 2 years.

My Wednesday Walk starts from this section of the park which I will call the promenade.

The promenade used to be the old dirt tracks which was retained and paved with bricks and now a popular place for exercising. There are also large sculptures all over the place, as you will see later. They were created by the well-known sculptor, Kublai Millan, who used indigenous people called "lumads" as his model.

The middle of the park used to be the old soccer field which was now converted into a picnic / rest area with numerous benches placed under accacia and other tropical trees. Here, people can do stretching or rest after a strenuous workout, or hold zumba sessions or the more in thing now which is muay thai, or meditate, or simply just relax and enjoy the scenery which are all lush and green plants, trees and flowers.

Walking along the promenade one can see just how green this park is.

I am now on the other side of my starting point and these are sights that I saw:

More sculptures!

The two pictures above are found on my left side while on my right is a pond (photo below) with more sculptures again.

Rounding the bend of the promenade:

I saw this exotic flower which I do not know the name.

Some kind of palm tree with fan-like fronds.

A nipa cottage or resting place where you can rest or picnic with family.

A nursery where they propagate their plants.

In the homestretch of the promenade:

A children's Fun Park

A "cleaning lady" by the Men's Room (This could make a good entry to the Make Me Smile Challenge lol)

There's a bridge by this side of the promenade

Where you can get a view from above

Back at the starting point of this walk. To my right is a sculpture of the Philippine Eagle:

A bambusetum (a collection of different species of bamboo)

And more sculptures:

Davao People’s Park is one of the most expensive parks in the Philippines. It is one of the cleanest and greenest parks in the country and dubbed as the "best park in the Philippines" as well. Entrance to the People’s Park of Davao is free. They say it is patterened after the 843 acre Central Park in New York City.

Of the park's over four-hectare land area, almost 10, 000 square meters are allotted to plants. More than 1,000 species of wild plants and trees gathered from the dark rainforests of Africa, Madagascar, New Guinea, Borneo, Indonesia, Central America, Australia and the Philippines have been planted in the park.

An example of this is this dipterocarp more popularly known as lauan. It is the specie of choice of lumber people because of its cylindrical trunk which is good for plywood and lumber.

Well, I guess that's it for my Wednesday Walk. There are more that I wanted to show but maybe in another post, a sequel to this perhaps.

This is my entry to the Wednesday Walk Challenge of @tatoodjay. All Photos are mine from my Samsung J2 Prime Cell Phone.