North Luzon on Two Wheels: Sagada

 Happy Philippine Independence Day!

Put your flags in the air! And wave it like you just don't care!

In observance of our day of freedom, Henri and I will share with you more stories about our fancy-free bike trip of Luzon. Next stop: Sagada!

You can't go there not wanting to go back. You just can't. So after years of talking it up, I got to bring Henri to one of my favorite places in these 1,107 (more or less, amiright China?) islands.

While it takes around 5 hours to reach Baguio, it takes another 5-6 hours to get to this mountain refuge and that's actually one of the best things about it. Because it's so remote, only those who really want to be there are rewarded.

We took the Hanselma Highway, the highest road in the country, and one of the most scenic. 

Overlapping verdant slopes vanishing into mounds of light blue haze, carved in the middle by a silver sliver of a river or a stray waterfall...

Or the occasional raging forest fire.

Ash rained down on us but we drove through it. And when we called the attention of some barangay (village) guy on the other side of the hill so he could do something before the fire razed the powerlines along with the whole hillside he went like, "Yeah, I know." Yeah dude, so do something.

But to be fair, he didn't mean to be rude.

That was our introduction to mountain life. (Or a reintroduction for me, at least.) Here, time is a foreign concept. There is no schedule, no such thing as late, no such thing as urgent. Things are done when they are done. So when you tell a guy "come on, do something about it now!" You get a smile that means "it gets done when it's meant to get done."

It took us a long time before we could find a nice enough place to stay in. It wasn't a busy day, but it was hard to decide on a place with a soft bed, en suite bathroom, and a fair rate all bunched up into one neat package. I knocked on almost all the inns on the main road, and just before we lost all hope we found this log cabin at the top of the village with everything we were looking for. We just had to be patient.

We had this terrace overlooking EVERYTHING. And there was a dap-ay just below.

By sunset we joined the people gathered around the dap-ay (a traditional gathering place made of stones with a bonfire at the center) and had a drink or ten with some tourists and guides.

Sagada is still raw and unembellished, though it has already changed a lot since I first came. Some rustic haunts have been replaced by cement walls or migrated to bigger locations, one favorite inn has disappeared, a certain coffee shop does not serve carrot cake anymore... but one welcome change is the ATM. They finally got ATMs. Except, when we really needed money there was a big power outage and the only way to get money was to go to Bontoc - the capital of the Mountain Province - a few hours away.

The Chico River in Bontoc.

We had no more money for food so we couldn't sit and wait for the electricity to come back, so we jumped on the next jeep to Bontoc.

We had a so-so lunch, and didn't have time to do much else. So although the museum there is pretty nifty, we had to hop onto a jeep so we could go back to doing farniente (do nothing) in Sagada.

So for those who don't know, this is a jeep. And in the mountains you can ride inside it...

Or you could ride on top of it.

Which may seem dangerous (well, it is), but when you think about it - if the jeep ever rolled over it would be easier for those on top to jump off. (Knock on wood.) And honestly, it's the best way to travel. Who can argue with 360-degree views like this?

Even though we had a close call with a low cave/tunnel opening, it was such a rush!

We're alive!!!!

And when we got off at the junction, we took a slice of cake and mountain brew at the farmers' coop to celebrate coming out unscathed after our brush with death! (Or maybe just throbbing pain a few dolfenal could fix. Whatevs.)

In Sagada, there's a main road and some small streets that dead end into people's homes. We meandered through some of these by mistake because we didn't have a map, and we were looking for places I last visited ten years ago. So yeah, we got lost. Thank heavens Henri has an internal GPS that saved us a couple of times from angry guard dogs.

But that was the point. The point was to get lost and to find new ways through the maze, otherwise we'd go through the same trails, step on the same rocks and take pictures with the same twisted tree roots as everyone... a cookie cutter trip.

To illustrate: I wonder how many people have posed this way next to this old tree?

Well, the town is small and most repeat visitors must have seen everything there is to see, but it's the experience that we remember the most. Like that one hike we took, when Henri said he knew where we were going and we ended up lost, circling the mountainside for hours, always hoping we were close to the road but never quite getting there. Then Henri said let's follow the sound of the water, it's going to be an adventure!

And the trail became more and more faint, until there was no more trail to follow, and there was no way but to climb over barbed wire and tall rocks, and make tough choices between a river disappearing into the center of the earth (or maybe spurting out of a waterfall if we're Indiana Jones-level lucky)...

 and reliving our Annapurna trek, which near killed my lungs and legs the first time.

We went with Annapurna Rewind. We don't have a picture of it here, but the beauty that greeted us at the top of that mountain was spectacular. I wouldn't do it again, but it was the best reward for the scratches and aches that we gathered on our way up.

And even though in the video Henri took I was mad at him for taking us so far off course on a hunch, on hindsight it was a great adventure after all. And we found our way out just before it got totally dark. We were done hiking when we were meant to be done hiking. These mountain people might be on to something.

Later, Henri got his chance to enter the caves and bathe in the underground pools. He went alone because I get crazy scared of small, dark, subterranean spaces. He left in the morning with one pair of slippers and came home with a totally different pair; he came in with a clean shirt and he was spat out caked in mud. And he says it was the best experience ever.

His cave connection journey started at Sumaguing cave, and he squeezed out though Lumiang, where some coffins were stacked centuries ago.

Also known as the Burial Cave, it's just one of the places one can admire the hanging coffins.

Here's another hangout.

On the way to search for the coffins we hoped to eat someplace a friend highly recommended, but a German guy tipped us off that it was closed because they didn't have water. We went down there anyway, just to see the rice terraces hiding behind the restaurant.

We went on one last hike just before leaving Sagada-- up the highway and through a fern forest was another village with terraces that were being prepped for planting. Was this where all the water went? Kidding.

And on our way back, it was getting dark and cold and we hitched a ride on a passing jeep which turned out to be a group from the Department of Agriculture. That's the kind of thing you get in Sagada: people eager to help and eager to make connections, eager to hear your story and tell theirs. (This character of theirs became more pronounced when we got to Banaue, which is a nightmare I'll get into later.)

Even with the growing number of restaurants and inns, Sagada still feels like a tiny capsule. They do not have the distractions that Baguio has, but you don't feel yourself looking for them. There is internet, but you don't feel yourself reaching for your phone because there are so many connections to make. In a few days we had our regular watering hole and a group of people who treated us like old friends whether they were locals or tourists.

We taught this French-Italian couple the meaning of "Mr. Pogi.

It had puzzled them since they arrived in Manila.

On our last night, we crossed paths with a guide we met on our first day. We didn't get his services but he was warm and genuine, and he introduced us to his friends who do odd jobs in the day but play their drums and guitars at night. And so we gathered around the dap-ay and played until the bonfire died and the dark had its fill of music.