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"I love to go a-wandering along the mountain tracks..." | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I was freezing in my seat inside the bus. It was 4 am of November 1 and we were bound for the highlands of Ifugao and Mt. Province. "This is crazy," I thought. We would be going with the mob on an exodus to the North. It is All Saints Day --- everybody goes to somewhere else. I braced myself for a loooooong ride. It was a thirteen-hour travel (with numerous stops and rerouted traffic) that traversed Nueva Ecija and Nueva Vizcaya. Signs of civilization thinned out as the bus zigged-zagged along Dalton Pass. Finally, we're traveling in the middle of nowhere---sort of. The Caraballo mountain range loomed as my ears popped. After some time, the Cordilleras appeared. My heart leaped. That's where we were heading. Going into the heart of the highlands is no easy feat when it's rainy and when the fog threatened to shroud your path. It was a slow climb to Ifugao but it was fine with me for there may be chickens and cows running around the road and be instantly turned to adobo after being run over by a bus. Mmmmm. It was said that if you accidentally killed an animal in Cordillera, you would have to pay not only the monetary value of that animal today but also the amount of the potential income it might generate (from eggs, milk, piglets, etc.). Yeah, I know it's an expensive affair. Banaue The road going to Banaue provides a beautiful vista of the rushing river and occasional terraces below. Arriving at Greenview Inn, I took a lungful of the cool mountain air and rushed to the windows to see the view of the terraces dotted with concrete and wooden houses. My heart dropped to my toes. Is this the famous Banaue Rice Terraces? I was disappointed for there was nothing much to see, save for the hanging bridge that beckoned me to cross it. I was proven wrong the next day. The view at the back of our inn was not THE postcard-type Banaue Rice Terraces. We have to go farther up the mountains at 6:00 in the morning to see the famous view, away from the poblacion. I think it was called the Viewpoint. My insides did somersaults as my eyes held the remaining unspoiled beauty of the terraces. I say 'remaining' because not far away, there were already glistening GI sheets of houses perched along the terraces. Give it another five years, there will no longer be any sights to see so I relished the moment that I was able to gaze at the ancient Ifugao handiwork. As the fog sitting over the valleys and terraces slowly ascended the Cordillera, I almost erased the words on the commemorative plaque on the site and replace them with a new title: The Vanishing Wonder of the World. Of course, shopping was included in our itinerary. Members of our tour bought trinkets, woodcarvings, and Ifugao cloth in a 'shopping village' near the viewpoint. I fancied a bulol (rice god) carving. It was ugly that I simply had to have it. The uglier, the better. I saw a similar wood carving in a souvenir shop I visited in Manila and it costs about P500-P1,000 (depending on the size). In Banaue it was only P100-P150! They said if you put the bulol on top of your rice container, your household would not run out of rice. I immediately bought four of them (hehehe!) The bulol is a god (anito) placated and venerated for protection of the Ifugao's rice harvest stored in houses or for a bountiful harvest. |
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Joyride to Sagada "I love to go a-wandering along the mountain track/and as I go I love to sing/my knapsack on my back..." My grade school song came into my head as my eyes swept over the valleys below me. By 10:00 a.m., our jeep was already weaving through the treacherous rough road (Halsema Highway) carved out of the mountainsides of Ifugao and Mt. Province. This ride is not for the acrophobics: on one side of the road was the rocky mountain slopes while on the other side was the deep gorge between mountains carved by a long and old river (and if my geography was right, it was the Chico River). The three-hour ride consisted of various rice and vegetable terraces along the slopes and river, ravines, road wash from the quarrying happening above us, series of small 'falls' and brooks along the highway, hanging bridges, and endless rocky narrow road. I don't know if it was still used but I saw a cart attached to a cable crossing the valley to reach the opposite mountainside. I was supposed to marvel at the majestic view that unfolded before us but I was too busy worrying what our driver would do if we would encounter a huge truck plying the almost-one-lane road. Mind you, there were several of them we met along the way. It's quite a tricky situation especially along the part where huge marble slabs/rocks were strewn all over the wet road. Now I know why there are news reports of buses falling off the highway into the ravine. We passed by Bontoc, the capital of Mt. Province. It was cute to see an inn/hotel sitting amongst the rice paddies and terraces. Bontoc, it seemed to me, was nestled in the bosom of the imposing mountain ranges. The town is only a few kilometers from the province of Kalinga while Baguio was still some 130+ km away. I learned later that day (as we visited the Bontoc Museum) that Bontoc was the home of the headhunters. These people have elaborate ceremonies for funeral and burial. However, the person who was captured and decapitated by the enemy didn?t have any ceremony to honor him at all. His tribe considered his headless defeat an embarrassment to them. Family members just dug a hole and that was it. Headhunting became extinct some 40 years ago, or so our guide told us. |
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Sagada was west of Bontoc and up we went to the town famed for its morbidly fascinating ancestral hanging coffins and some exciting spelunking activities. And oh, don?t forget about the Sagada weaving. During our drive to Sagada, we saw limestone rock formations along the slopes and on top of the mountains and the outlines of terraces again below us. Harvest season was over hence the abandoned look of these rice paddies. After laboring to go up the town center, we had to come down the edge of the town to visit the dead. The coffins, that is. The hike down to the Lumiang Burial Cave was easy made complicated by other people pulling and pushing one another along the steep trail. Some of us huffed and puffed down the rocky path quite well while others were too scared to put their foot down on another rock. When we reached the cave's mouth,, about a hundred coffins stacked on top of one another against the rocks and cave wall greeted us noisy tourists. A couple of local Sagada children trying to impress us opened the coffins (with lizard figures carved on the wooden lids) and played with their ancestors' bones. Ugh! I was disheartened by the desecration of their native cultural heritage --- but I think it was our own fault too since tourism brings about this change and lack of reverence to their past. After five minutes communing with the dead, I had to come back up the trail again to keep the area from being crowded. I really wanted to go to the Sumaguing Caves for some real spelunking since the Lumiang cave tour was too tame for my liking. In Sumaguing (it is connected to Lumiang, they said), you have to crawl, rappel, and trudge through waist-deep water to reach its recesses. It is a four-hour exploration that I wished I had gone to. Obviously we wouldn't be able to do that because most of our tour companions were middle aged or senior citizens. But I'll come back to Sagada for that soon. There and back again The trip back to Banaue was a hair-raising one. The fog suddenly descended upon us like a thick blanket covering everything. We couldn't see a thing down the valley and the mountain ranges. As it grew darker, the visibility slowly diminished. At 5 pm, we could still see the road 20 meters ahead. 5:30, it was down to ten. By 6:00, it was so dark and foggy that my boyfriend could only see the road 5 m ahead of us and beyond that was already a blank nothingness. To me it was already zero visibility because of my bad eyesight. The stupid thing here was earlier in the day I chose to sit beside the driver so the terror factor that night was greater. None of my companions was uttering a word. All of us were scared stiff. It was a cold night but I was sweating profusely and my lips were already cracked. I was already thinking whether I would go to heaven or hell if we suddenly hurtle over the ravine into the darkness. It was the scariest drive of my life. Halleluiah! Thanks to the careful and skillful driving of our pilot, we arrived in Banaue in one piece. I've never been so happier that I almost kissed the wet pavement. Even though my brain failed to function with terror, the experience added spice to my trip to the North. We were supposed to go to the village of Banga-an the next day (with a spectacular view, the guides promised) where we could walk along the rice terraces and visit the traditional community. We were supposed to, as I said, but the weather wouldn't cooperate. Our tour organizers couldn't risk another drive like the one we had the previous night. The cancelled trip made me hunger for more. Actually, the whole experience made me crave for more things this part of the world could offer. This first exposure to the Cordillera highlands is just an icing on the cake. I'll definitely come back and go a-wandering once more along the mountain tracks of Cordillera. EN |
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Visit Other Pages | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Lure of the Caves | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Into the Heart of the Fire | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Seppuku | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
When I Lost My Heart to a Japanese | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
naked woman in the city circle | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
UP Kappa Phi Sigma | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||