Philippines: Luzon
Like many developing countries beauty is often forgotten when the noise and pollution of the cities is inescapable, until one gets out of the city that is. In late 1999 I went to the Philippines with my wife; after attending the 87th Grey Cup in Vancouver where the Ti-Cats beat Calgary 33-21. We loaded in a jeepney (public transport common in the country) in Manila to head north to Lupao, Nueva Ecija, it was 29 degrees and muggy. We headed north for the five and a half hour, 200 km journey, the trip was dreadful. Jeepney's are partially open on the sides so it did not take long to get a sore throat from the exhaust fumes from all the idle vehicles on the crowded streets. Just outside the city there were many garbage fires on the sides of the street, I squinted and held my breathe the best I could; all the time taking in the new territory.
While visiting my wife's family we made a couple of local trips......well,3 jeepney's and 4 tricycle rides. We kept passing or being passed by a tricycle that was pulling a trailer loaded with 6 large pigs; the bottom one was fighting, squirming, and squealing trying to get out from the bottom, it was so hot. After passing this trailer many times I was very thankful that I was not a pig. We headed out of Lupao to travel and the first stop was Baguio, which has an elevation of 1500 metres; the weather is a lot more pleasant, the scenery was okay. After a couple of days we loaded a bus to head to Bontoc, while sitting in the bus guys loaded a tied up pig into the undercarriage, you can imagine how much squealing it did. The first 2 hours on the narrow mountain roads allowed us spectacular views, the mountain scenery was very nice.
Once we reached the highest road elevation in the Philippines (approx. 2,400 metres) it got very cool, local villagers were wearing heavy jackets and hats.
Over half the road over the mountain was gravel, a lot of it one lane; there were many washout spots and tight corners where one vehicle would have to back up if they saw another one. Word had it that many a vehicle goes over the edge on that road....scenery was so beautiful though, photo's would not do the view justice.
Bontoc was good for us, the next day we took the jeepney to Sagada. When we arrived we went for a short walk before finding lodging.
That short walk ended up to be 4 hours of hiking through the bush, we ended up to be very happy with our adventure. Sagada is known for caves and it's hanging coffins so on our first hike we saw a couple of caves and many coffins hanging on the cliffs.
I would not want to be the guy who had to drive the steel pin in to hold the coffin, or one of the guys to hang it. Although we got all scratched up and muddy, our first day in Sagada was very successful; the people were very friendly and we found a nice place for sleeping.
The next day was a Saturday so it was market day, people from the small villages brought their wares into the small town, the people were all happy.
After that we headed to the Kiltepan Peak for another stunning view before making our way to the Bokong Waterfall. We were gone for 6.5 hours in total, there was a lot of up and down but we were sure satisfied.
At 2am that night we were awoke by an earthquake that shook our little cottage pretty good, the front two supports were stilts about 5 metres up from the ground. My wife was scared because she was in Lupao in 1990 when a large earthquake killed so many people. Needless to say we never got back to sleep, we had to take the 6am jeepney back to Bontoc anyway. At 7:30 we sat on the Bontoc-Banaue bus and it would not start so we had to get out and help push it to jump start it. Our first hour had great scenery but as we climbed the rain was upon us, when we got to a lookout for a supposed spectacular view we could not even see in front of our hand, never mind taking a photo. Somewhere in the mist were the very famous Banaue Rice Terraces.
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