In case you don't know anything about Sagada , let me tell you this, Sagada was awarded the cleanest mountain village in 1996 AND 1997. With awards like that, I had to make it my business to go and check the place out.
(In Bontoc) I had just missed a Jeepney by 5 minutes so I asked the driver when this one was taking off. His response was 'whenever the jeepney is full'. good answer.
So, he advised me to go into the local shop for a beer (This was 11 o clock in the morning so I think he was joking). Nevertheless, I concurred with his statement and bought a San Miguel. I ended up watching a Thunder V SPURS n.b.a game (Basketball is the big sport over here.) A local person asked me who my team was. I didn't know how to answer that as my knowledge of basketball lies somewhere between my knowledge of beauty products and my knowledge of women. Still, it passed the time until the bus was full. The driver let me go up on the roof again (it's the ONLY way to travel around here!! (well, once you can handle a sore ass for a while) ) The journey was fairly short anyway (around 40 minutes) but I am glad I did not take photos during this drive or I would have gone over the roof of the Jeepney.
It's really cool to see the locals hanging off the jeepney with no fear of them being thrown off!! To be honest,it's
fairly safe though.
I grabbed a room at the stayaway guesthouse in Sagada (350 pesos per night)
Nice bed and room combo
and headed on down to the tourist office to grab a guide and go caving!!
I went caving (with a guy called George )
George leading the way into the caves
at one of the local caves. It was really cool (well, the rainy season
has just started over here and with the typhoon that hit 2 days ago, some of the caves had a drop or 2 of water)
Before, we set into the caves , we saw the hanging coffins by the side of the mountins.
Hanging Coffins of Sagada
As we entered the cave, we saw more coffins.
(Traditional) Unnamed Coffins
All these coffins were small and unmarked. In this part of the world, the locals believe that the physical body is not important anymore so there is no need to bury or name the person in the coffin.The body is put in a foetal position and left in the cave.
Then , the caving started! George carried around what looked like a paraffin lamp
Keep her lit George!
An underground stream (Enough to swim in if you are feeling brave\dumb enough to try- I'll refrain from answering the obvious question )
Meeting a few people in the caves (and no,it is not compulsory to wear black tops when caving!)
do (and it was recommended by George.) We used a rope to climb a couple of inclines.At one point the lamp extinguished
itself so all you could hear was the flow of the water.This was really cool! It was nice to see daylight at the end of
the 3 hours but it was definately wrth the experience. (I think my clothes and shoes might have to be thrown out due
to excess moisture though!!) . Come to think of it, Aron Ralston [The guy from the movie '127 hours' ] must have had
some sort of death wish to caving by himself!. How anyone can go caving by themselves is beyond me as you would never
get found (unless by pure luck!)
The weather in this part of the country is noticably cooler than Manila. So, it is much easier to walk around without turning into a sweat patch! The Philippino men seem to have an ingenious way of not sweating on their bellies. If it is getting hot, you will see quite a few men lift their t- shirts up to their chest cavity such that they look like they a wearing a tank top and showing off their midriff. It looks quite weird (and no women do this.) but I guess if it saves you from perspiring all over your clothes, then it's quite functional!
Another thing that I have noticed is the ability of cocks to come out of nowhere and start crowing at 5 in the morning.I have stayed in a few places and i think without failure , i have heard as cock crow most mornings around 5.It's uncanny!
Anyway, Back to Sagada! The next Morning, I went for a trek.
Mountainside view of Sagada
Cool view of hanging cloud over Sagada
Sagada on a summers day
I paid a visit to the local pottery place and had a chat with the owner while she made pottery.
She was saying a missionary created the pottery idea but headed back the the US before it was complete. He trained a
few locals in the art of pottery making and it became a flurishing business!
This is where the magic happens
The woman gets some stoneware that was wrapped in cellophane to keep away the moisture.
Then, she belted the doughy like substance and worked hher magic.
Getting the stoneware out of the cellophane and softening it
Moulding the stoneware into a piece of pottery
Don't forget to keep the peddle going with your right foot!
And after about 4 minutes, Voila!!
I went further up into he mountains past a couple of houses
House built in the mountains
Partially completed road (common enough in some mountain areas in Luzon)
, past the ubiquitous cattle
" Follow me to the mountain top "
and the clapped out jeepney
A fairly bland looking Jeepney
to the waterfall.
It's splashy,splashy time
At this point, i thought it might be a good idea to try and get some energy back so I ate the
Philippino equivalent of power sauce bars (marsh mallows and peanuts with some water!
Chocolate covered marshmallows ...mmmmmmmmmmmm
Not just nuts, Cracker nuts (just for the crack)
I decided to walk a bit further asnd view the lake. I did not stay here too long as I reckon the mosquitos coukd be
all over this place.
The lake (infested with ..... emmmmm.....dirt and water)
At 8:30,I went for dinner to the local restaurant and I chose some pork steak. Well,when I say,I chose,I mean
the waiter told me that there is a curfew at 9 so the quickest thing to cook is pork so choose that! I just wanted food so I went for the pork.
I got chatting to a Korean guy who was telling me that he moved his family over to the Philippines so that his son could learn English. He thought about moving the family to various places (including Ireland) but he decided on the Philippines as it was the best option. He was telling me his son wanted to move to the U.S to see all 'the stars'.
This guy was about to sell his sculpting business in Korea and move it all to the Philippines. I now know that it costs 2 million pesos to make a Brontasauras out of styrofoam (That's a lot of styrofoam). I wonder how big the dinosaur creating business is in the Philippines. My guess is not too big but if that guy can sculpt as well as he can describe construction of a 25 foot animal, he'll be fine!
I went to a place called 'Yoghurts house '
View from the balcony of 'Youghurts house'
tried the mountain tea with a egg,lettuce,ham and apple sandwich
.num num
The egg and the apple go really well together
I saw a family ,called me something like 'cuya' when i pass (just checked from the words you told me TinTin. It means brother\man! I knew those words would come in handy !). They seem like a nice crowd. They were saying that it took 10 hours driving from Manila to get to Sagada and they started at 1am that morning. They only have 2 days here so they'll have no time to take it easy!
Anyway, it was time for me to move on so I waited at the hub of Sagada (the fire station) in anticipation of the
bus that would get me to Baguio.
The fire truck (which i guess doubles as a fire station)
..... Right on queue, at around 12:30 p.m ,it started raining and it rained fairly constant for a few hours (as is the custom during rainy season. I took a few shots from the bus on my journey from Sagada to Baguio.Here are some of the pics #
There was a kind of protective sheeting around gthe glass of the bus but someone ripped part of it off, just enough for me to take this shot
The mountain roads from Sagada to Baguio looked a lot like this. The bus driver on this route is one brave man during the rainy season
Going away from Sagada
Not too fast Mr Bus Driver
This just looks like a cool Jeep! (Taken 20km from Sagada)
A J.C.B Philippino style (which is the same style as a European J.C.B)!
Damn, That's a long way down!
A slightly less scary view of the Sagadan countryside
The bus reached Baguio 7 hours later.I was told it would normally take 4 hours but due to the rains, it took a
lot longer.I was fine with this as it looked like the rains had started to wash some of the road away.The drivers of
these journeys are brave people! I was going to head straight to Pagudpud but I was a bit sick of traveling so I went
to the 'villagers inn' in Baguio and asked for the cheapest room.They said it was already gone but the guy that had
booked it said that there a spare bed in the room so we decided to share.The guys name was [and is!] Jai Jun (JJ) and he is a
business studies student traveling through the Philippines.He had booked the room for 350pesos but there were 2 beds in the
room. When I asked the women if there were any spare beds , she said no but then he said that there were so she
charged me the 350 for the other bed. The only person that lost out on the deal was JJ as he didnt have his own room
anymore but he was fine with that and i was happy as i had a place to sleep!
I had a quick check to see if anybody knew of the football matches currentky taking place in europe but nobody
had any interest.Football (or soccer as it is known by some people here) The main international sports are basketball followed by boxing (specifically Manny Pacquio) The only thing that seems to be on the tv over here are talent shows and the 'Talent' is just as good as it is back home.Simon Cowell has a lot to answer for!
We decided to head out for a beer after I got something to eat so I headed into town and visited a local food
shop opposite the main mcdonalds. I have to say it was the worst food that I have tasted during my travels (Aside from
the rice and the chicken which were fine), the vegetables and the other plate tasted like salt and I coiuld only eat
one bite of them before nearly throwing up.I think I might have thrown up if I could see the meal but there were an
alarming number of flies between my face and the meal which blocked my view of the meal (which was a good thing )
Even Balut must taste better than this
Anyway,after leaving behind 3/4 of the meal,I headed back to the Hostel and J.J any I went to some Karaoke bar (The
whole of the Philippines is full of Karaoke\Videoke bars.) This one contained quite a lot of tone deaf people! As I didn't give
it a go myself, I reserve the right to call everyone else cr*p as I am sure I am worse. One of the barwomen was saying
that she could speak French and arabic and I asked her , "how did that happen" She replied "I grew up in the Lebanon".
I never knew french was spoken there.
The beers in the place were really cheap (50 peso about a euro ) for a 500ml bottle. The differance in prices
for beer (in bars) between Malaysia and the Philipines is amazing. I guess drinking in bars is frowned upon in
Malaysia. Anyway J.J
J.J armed with a camera
was traveling through the Philippinesfor the last month as he had just finished his
Business studies exams. He was planning on hitching from Baguio to Manila the day after (quite a feat if he managed
it.) He was telling me to drop over to Singapore if I get the chance as It's quite different to the rest of asia. I
might do that while I am traveling down through Indonesia.
After a few beers , it was time to get some shut eye.
[ As an aside, I never knew that Baguio experienced a powerful earthquake in the esrly 90s which killed many people and destroyed a fair bit of the town.I am not sure if i saw that bit of town though.]
The following morning,I headed up to the bus terminus to grab a bus to get to Pagudpod (A beach area).
I walked past the church (the Philipines is full of churches and Jeepneys)
Church in Baguio
Baguio...a.k.a Jeepney central
and past the most vital shop that I have passed by---yep, you guessed it,
the uratex foam shop
Stop the search party! I have found the foam shop!
to get to the bus terminus.
I had to grab a taxi from here as the bus to pagudpod went by the convention centre.After the taxi driver asked
me the usual questios...ie: "are you married? Of course you are not, that's why you are travelling", the taxi driver
told me that he lived in Saudi Arabia once and if you wanted to see some publlic lashings in Jeddah, that was possible
(note to self: never visit Saudi Arabia) He told me that there was no direct bus to pagudpod .You had to go to Laoag
first and then get a connecting bus the rest of the way.Fair enough, So while waiting to buy a ticket to Laoag , i
bought a homemade burger (30 peso)
That's good eating!
and sat down on the ground.I started looking at some photos that I had
taken and an old woman came u to me and started talking in Tagalog. I hadn't a clue what she was saying but that
didn't stop her from talking to me so I started showing her some photos.I think that must have bored her as she walked
away after a minute.
After buying the ticket to get to Laoag, I jumped on the bus, where loads and loads and loads AND LOADS of
vendors walked up and down to try try and sell any food [Buko pies,empanadas,peanuts,lettuce,cauliflower,other
vegetables] they could. I bought a few Buko pies and an empanada
Buko Pie with an Empanada on top
The Buko pies were ok but I paid 200 pesos for them (The locals on the bus kept telling me that I was done for 100 peso) but the empanada was really tasty and for 10 peso it was really cheap.If you ever visit this area, stick with empanadas!!!
At one point, when checking the ticket, the bus conductor asked me where I was going and I drew a blank.I had
completely forgotten Laoag so I had to go to the front of the bus and read the sign where the bus was going!
Actuslly, before i forget, [Shameless recommendation number 1] JJ recommended a site that I should visit called the 5000 project.When he was traveling
last year, he met a guy who decided that he wanted to make his way around the world while spending 5000 aussie
dollars.His story can be found on ....... http://5000project.com/
If any of you guys are heading to Sagada and you might want to try a few more things [Shameless recommendation number 2], you could read http://minnie-victoriano.blogspot.com/2012/06/sagada.html
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