Banaue and Sagada!

This weekend, we had the opportunity to take the first big trip since going to Puerto Galera. Friday was Los Baños Day, so school was cancelled. We took this opportunity to head up north the towns of Banaue and Sagada. Banaue is known around the world for its rice terraces, which the Ifugao tribe began carving into the mountainside nearly 2000 years ago! On Thursday night, we took the night bus that left Manila at 10PM and arrived in Banaue at 8AM the next morning. Sleeping on the bus wasn’t easy, but it was awesome to be able to not waste daylight traveling. When we arrived in Banaue, we checked into Uyami’s Green View Lodge. The Ifugao are known for their wood carvings, and the lodge was a testament to this ancient tradition as its doors and handrails were carved with intricate pictures of the native Ifugao lifestyle. From the lodge, we were able to hire a van and a tour guide named Johnson to take us to Sagada for the day.

Sagada is only about 45 miles away from Banaue, but traveling through the winding mountain road took us almost 3 hours! The views from the car were absolutely beautiful though, so I don’t think anyone minded the drive. Once in Sagada, we ate at Masferre, named for the Eduardo Masferre, the father of Philippine photography. Masferre gained worldwide recognition in the 1980s for his work depicting the Ifugao village people who had been isolated from worldwide developments for thousands of years.

After lunch, we hired a couple of tour guides to take us through the Sumaging Cave. The tour guides first took us to Lumiang Cave, where we saw hundreds of “hanging coffins.” The Filipinos used to bury their dead in this manner, because they believed allowing your body to hang freely in space ensured that your soul would return to Mother Nature. In later years, Filipino’s started to stack the coffins, instead of hanging them off the side of cliffs.

You can see the stacks of coffins in the upper right-hand corner.

Next we made our way to Sumaging Cave for our caving. None of us really knew what to expect, but it was way cooler than I could have ever imagined. The only light we had was from the two lanterns carried by our tour guides. There were no steps built through the cave like you find in the U.S. We had to make our way through the cave nearly the same way its first explorers would have done thousands of years ago.  We spent a great deal of the tour with our shoes off (we left them on a ledge somewhere) and walking/climbing through pools of water and over huge formations with water flowing all around. At a few points, we were up to our necks in water and at one point we had to get on our hands and toes and maneuver our bodies through a really tight space, all while not hitting our heads on the pointy ceiling! It was definitely a lot of work, but one of the neatest experiences I have ever had!

Me making my way down a rock curtain waterfall.

The group…happy to be safe at the bottom :)

After the cave tour, we all slept pretty good that night! The next morning, we woke up and went on a 3 hour trek through the rice terraces in Banaue. Again, this was much more physically demanding than we anticipated—some parts required us to scramble up nearly vertical slopes without slipping (and yes, it was drizzling nearly the entire time!). I think I tripped/fell more often than everybody else combined in those two days, but I made it through!

Johnson was our tour guide again. His family owns and works about 50 levels of the rice terraces, so he was extremely knowledgeable about the whole process and the Ifugao traditions. According to Johnson, most of the rice grown on the terraces is for personal use. The breed of rice grown is the same rice that the area has been producing for thousands of years. It is organic and extremely hardy, so it grows without fertilizer and with little maintenance. The terraces are irrigated by an extensive system of channels that were designed by the original builders 2000 years ago.

Originally, the irrigation system was comprised of bamboo stalks much like this one, but these have been replaced by concrete channels in recent years.

 

 

Among the Ifugao people, it is tradition to pass down the largest portion of the family rice terraces to the oldest child, a slightly smaller portion to the second child, and so on. The laws regarding such are so strict that issues of inheritance easily hold up in court.

 

We got to ride on top of a jeepney up to the viewpoint where our trek began! It offered a great view of the town and terraces.

  

 View of the terraces.

 

We got our picture taken with some old women dressed in native Ifugao dress.

While on our trek, we got to see some small communities scattered throughout the rice terraces. The people here were still living in nipa huts, the traditional home of the Ifugao tribes. A nipa hut is a small, one room house on stilts. Traditionally, nipa huts had thatched roofs, but the ones we saw had upgraded to tin roofs.

 A Nipa hut, the traditional Ifugao home.

RJ standing on the edge of one of the terraces.  

 The rice terraces up close. 

 

 GO GREEN!!! 

 

Mostly, we just had a really great time and got to see some beautiful sights. It was fun to go exploring up in the mountains for the weekend instead of studying!