To Sagada and back

I'm happily home again from my adventures in the Philippines. As always, great to be gone but great to be home. Below are a few photos and comments - an aid for my own memory as much as anything...

(For anyone interested, additional photos can be found here.)
 

Do we all look a little relieved that the two-day workshop is done - and that teachers left happy? Elementary classroom teacher, Lianne, and head of school, Pat, were gracious hosts for my visit to the Brent International School, Subic. Lianne was one of the writers of the EARCOS grant that brought me to the school to do the workshops. Small, personal and effective, Brent is a place I would happily place my own grandchildren.

My plans for hiking Mt. Pinatubo and for getting a car fell through, so I decided to bus straight to Sagada on Monday. I got to Baguio at about 1:30PM on the Victory Liner, discovering that the last bus for Sagada left at 1:00PM. Distances are deceiving in northern Luzon. 100km doesn't sound very far until you realize that one's average traveling speed is less than 25 kph. Twisting, two lane roads that seem have at least one one-lane section each mile are the rule. It's understandable why no one wants to drive in the dark in the mountains, including bus drivers. Pictured above: the Dau bus station. Imagine Christmas music playing in the background

 

I spent the afternoon in Baguio walking through the huge market and parks in the downtown area. What I remember as a sleepy mountain town in 1988 is now a mess of human and vehicular congestion. But if you need rice, the three-times-a-day staple of the Philippine diet, this is the place to be. Pictured: rice stall in the Baguio downtown market.

Color and congestion on a cool, rainy day. The shot I missed was a sign that read "Beta Tape Rental Store." As you can tell by the wires, the infrastructure in most places in the Philippines is fully in view. 90% of the photos I took have a wire in them - or three or twenty. Pictured: Bagio street scene. 

U.S influences come out in surprising ways. Marilyn Monroe or the Marlboro cowboy stare at you from the sides of jeepneys, a fellow bus rider's ring tone plays Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A", an 8-foot tall fiber molded Incredible Hulk menaces the bus from in front of a small town gas station. Shot I missed: three scrawny laborers around a gravel truck with a hand-painted warning on the tailgate: No Fat Chicks. Pictured: Jeepney decoration in Baguio.

The euphemism for toilet in the Philippines is "comfort room." You learn quickly to keep a few piso coins in your pocket to pay for your time spent in, huh, comfort. I don't know the translation of Bawas above, but I can guess. Pictured: wall of Baguio bus station. 

The fascinating seven-hour bus ride from Baguio to Sagada went over the highest point in the Cordillera Mountains of northern Luzon. The road wound up and down the mountain sides with cloud cover ever changing. While in part I went north to see the rice terraces near Banaue, I hadn't realized the entire mountain range as been so sculpted. Pictured: mountain view near Sayangan.

Happily the Lizardo buses stop every couple hours so passengers can stretch, get food, and find comfort. Here we are mobbed by fresh vegetable pushers. The picture I didn't get: A sign reading "Say no to drugs; say yes to vegetables." Pictured here: street in Tabingan.

Clusters of small homes abound in the mountains, each household supported by gardens, chickens/goats/ducks/pigs, and a plot of rice. I've not seen such vibrant green since my trip to Ireland. Pictured: unknown village in the Cordillera.

Some over 2000 years old, these rice terraces have made the mountains working sculptures. They are still actively farmed with caribou (water buffalo) in the lower areas. Scene: terraces near Sagada.

The small tourist town of Sagada is know for its caves. The first I visited, Sumanging, was a long, slippery climb 150m down to a series of sandstone formations one clambered around on barefoot. My guide, Egbert, had trouble keeping his white gas lantern lit. Thank goodness for the flashlight app on my iPhone. The second cave is know for its "hanging coffins." One requirement for current burial in this fashion is being a grandfather. Pictured: wooden coffin from Lumiang cave near Sagada.

The only transportation from Sagada to Banaue was riding a jeepney. Decidedly not built for old, tall people like myself, I found a 100 piso ($2.50) bribe would get you the seat riding shot gun - not that there was much more leg room there. Pictured: Jeepney in Sagada.

The van ride from Bontoc to Banaue was my favorite. Scenes like the one above were typical and probably not much different from when the Spanish unsuccessfully tried to conquer the area in the 16th century. But they did manage to create the road on which we traveled, according to the driver. Pictured: valley rice fields southeast of Bontoc. 

A UNESCO Heritage site and often referred to as the Eighth Wonder of the World, the Banaue (ban'-ow-ee) Rice Terraces were enshrouded by clouds the entire time I was there. Nor did I have time to do what sounds like a great 15km hike from Bangaan to Banaue. As I tell my kids, if you do everything there is to do in a place the first time, you'll have no reason to go back. Pictured: view from Sanafe Hotel in Banaue.

My lunch at the hotel in Banaue was adobo - a delicious, marinated, highly seasoned meat dish. Along with the ubiquitous rice and an unidentified, but tasty vegetable. I also ate (when in Subic) at Jollibees, the Philippine answer to McDonalds.  Pictured: lunch at the Sanafe Hotel.

An afternoon hike took me through three small villages just outside Banaue. The hut design above is still used, unchanged for centuries, although increasingly the thatch roof is being replaced by corregated steel. The stone mortar in the lower left is used for hand grinding rice. My guide Jerry claims each of these houses is build above a large buried rock that absorbs the tremors of earthquakes, keeping them safe. Pictured: hut in Tam-an village.

While it looks pristine, ecological blunders have been made here as well. The Golden snail used to make escargot was introduced to these terraces as a cash crop. It promptly ate both the smaller, reportedly tastier, native snails and the native fish eggs. Now tilapia are raised in the terraces. Pictured: mountains near Banaue.

Rice harvesting here is still done by hand. This woman and her coworkers held small, hooked knives that were almost impossible to see in the palms of their hands. Graceful motions easily cut the head of rice from the stalk. The stalk is then, again by hand, cut and submerged to serve as nutrient for the next crop. Pictured: woman rice field worker near Banaue.

Jerry and I used the lip of the stone terraces to travel from village to village, winding back up in Banaue town in about three hours. Did I mentioned that during my stay in the Philippines, it rained every day but one - the day I toured Manila. My shoes never really did dry out. Pictured: rural area outside Banaue.

Jerry explained that one could eat fruit off trees in the area so long as it was eaten on the spot. If you carried the fruit away, it was then considered thievery. One last view down the valley, then the endless jeepney ride to Solino and the bus from there back to Baguio and from Baguio to Subic the next morning. There is a night bus that leaves Banaue at 7PM and arrived in Manila at 7AM. Next trip. Pictured: Valley near Banaue.

I came back to Manila on Friday afternoon with a car provided by Brent School. My driver, Arnel, made the trip in about three hours from Subic - about half of which was covering the last 20km through Manila in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Pictured: EDSA Boulevard, Manila.

The definition of travel implies movement. And on this trip, I moved nearly everyday. Of the ten nights I spent in the Philippines, I stayed in eight different hotels or hostels (at the Homestay in Sagada, highly recommended by the Lonely Planet, a cockroach fell out of my pants as I was putting them on.) I rode in vans, cars, motorcycle side cars, jeepneys, and three different bus lines.  The country is charming and exasperating. Despite individual's poverty by US standards, I could not detect a sense of sadness or anger - but a genuine cheerfulness and humor in nearly every person I talked to. The owner of the hotel in Banaue sort of adopted me, writing out the complex bus transfer system to get back to Subic. Even on the hazardous mountain roads and streets of Manila, I did not feel unsafe.

But then one of my rules of safe travel has always been to never get drunk and always be back in your hotel by 10PM. Worked again.

As somebody once said, "I shall return."