banaue faces

This trip is as much about travelling as it is about taking pictures. My companion and I are taking this opportunity to practice our photography skills, though I'm really too impatient to get all fancy about it. Though I'm more into taking scenery pictures, I took my friend's lead and began taking some people pictures.

On the left is a picture of a vendor at the marketplace. She is chewing betel nut that many people in Banaue chew.

Below are individual pictures of the elderly Ifugaos in traditional costumes. I didn't really bother with having them pose apart from the others or to edit the pictures.



While most of the elders were all together near where the buses and other vehicles park, this old man stood separately. He was further in, where you can see the rice terraces behind him. He was also close to a traditional Ifugao hut. It was interesting because he was speaking to us in English. We would speak to him in Tagalog while the guide would talk to him in Ifugao, but he wouldn't respond. Maybe he couldn't hear us, but when he would speak, he would speak in English.

around banaue

After looking at the rice terraces, we headed to town for lunch. In town, we saw these bundles of rice being dried on the streets. They are being dried before being sent for milling.

We also saw this traditional house adorned with carabao (water buffalo) skulls. According to a guest at the inn, these skulls are a sign of wealth as carabaos are rare in the mountains (hard to bring up the mountain). We don't know if that's true or not, but every time we see a carabao, or even a cow, my companion says "big time."

We then went to the hanging bridge. I'm not good with heights so I only made it part of the way before going back. Nice view from the bridge, though.



Afterwards, we climbed up to Banaue Museum, which is run by the descendants of American anthropologist H. Otley Beyer. We saw old pictures and artifacts, but not too many labels to provide context. These pages from a book at the museum provide some information about the rice terraces:



It was tiring climbing up to the museum, but it did have a nice view of the town and its surroundings.

banaue rice terraces

We managed to make a decision about what to do for the day (April 2). We hired ourselves a tricycle and dragged ourselves from the inn. It was hot, hot, hot outside.

Our primary objective was to see the famed Ifugao Rice Terraces. Dubbed by Filipinos as the "eighth wonder of the world," these rice terraces are said to have been been carved by hand a couple of thousand years ago. They start from the base of the Cordillera mountains up to a height of about 5000 feet. They were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995 and were put in the endangered list in 2001. Part of the reason I agreed to do this mountain trip was that I wanted to see these terraces before they really deteriorate (due to erosion and giant earthworms).

Rice terraces in a number of communities are actually included in the UNESCO designation, but the most well-known are probably the ones in Banaue proper. These terraces, specifically the one where you can see all around the mountain (right below), appear on the back of the P1000 bill.


So, even though we could see some terraces from the inn, we figured we should see this specific viewpoint. In Banaue, there are two viewpoints, or at least that's how many we went to. We first went to the higher viewpoint, where we took the picture above and these ones:



We then went to the lower viewpoint, where you could take pictures of elderly Ifugaos in traditional costumes (with a "donation"). That renders it inauthentic, of course, but it's cool anyway.


The following pictures are also from this lower vantage point:

i'm on the top of the world...

I didn't really sleep well my first night in Banaue, and I got up at around 6am on April 2. But what a morning! When we opened our window, we saw that the sun was shining on the mountaintops, but fog was covering the lower part of the mountains . Here's what it looked like:


We had decided not to go to Batad with the rest of the inn guests, so we had a leisurely morning. We took lots of pictures while it was foggy and after the fog lifted. These are pictures of the huts at our inn and of the surroundings:


There is another view deck near the huts, and this has the better view. This is the view of the mountains and terraces from the view deck. This is where we had breakfast.


This is a close up of the river below.


Such great views while we decided what to do for the rest of the day. We were enjoying ourselves too much that we had to force ourselves to actually leave the inn at 10:30am.

uhaj native inn

We had actually made arrangements for accommodations for the first part of our mountain trip; we were staying at Uhaj Native Village Inn. We had also made arrangements for a ride to the inn, and we’re glad we did. The inn is actually about 7km from town on winding, mostly unpaved roads. It took 30 minutes to get there via tricycle, and our bodies were a bit bruised. But on the way, we saw glimpses of the big mountains, rice terraces, and a few small waterfalls.

When we got to the inn (on April 1), it was worth the tricycle ride, especially when we saw the views. This is the view from the front viewdeck, which is where we had our welcome tea.

As the inn's name implies, the accommodations are in huts that are built according to the native Ifugao style. These huts are on stilts are are made of wood with a nipa (a type of palm) roof. Traditionally, these huts don't have windows, but we picked the only one with a window. And you can understand why. This was our hut and the view from our window. As you can see, we had our own view of the mountains and terraces and the river. We could hear birds and the river water.











After we had somewhat settled in, it rained and fog rolled in. We couldn't see anything--not the mountains or terraces.

We quickly found out the down side to this place though--there's no food. Well, they serve food, but the menu caters to foreigners, so no Filipino food for us. What we did order though didn't taste that great. But, as we were very far away from town, we had no choice.

In the afternoon, we decided to go to town so we could at least get some kind of food or snacks. We hitched a ride from some French tourists who were driving by. We bought some bread and bananas (for frying). We took a jeepney back to the inn. It involved a lot of waiting as we had to wait for the jeepney to be full before we could leave. (That's the jeepney you see roaring off after dropping us off.)

When we got back to the inn, the other guests--who were foreigners, were drinking and talking with a couple of the tour guides. One of the guides who was our tricycle driver that morning said that these guests wanted to build a bonfire and hang out as it was their last night. So, we did have a fire and we all made plans to go to Batad (another town) together. But after we were out of the smoke and had a hot shower before going to bed, we soon changed our minds about heading out so soon.

bus ride

It was a hectic time trying to finish our packing, cleaning up the apartment, dropping off our stuff, eating dinner, and driving to the bus terminal. But we got there in time and quickly settled in our seats. The bus left at 11pm.

It was cold in the airconditioned bus. With the shades closed and the lights turned off, I was soon fast asleep. Why is it that I have an easier time sleeping in moving vehicles, especially on planes, when I have such a hard time sleeping at other times? I was so fast asleep that I barely felt the winding roads. I didn’t really wake up until it was daylight, enough to see some of the winding roads, trees, and roadside waterfalls. We arrived in Banaue, Ifugao Province at around 7:30am on April 1.

déjà vu

On Monday (March 31) night, we were leaving for the mountains, so I spent all day getting ready—packing the stuff I needed to bring, packing the remaining stuff to be dropped off at my uncle’s (as we were leaving the apartment), and finishing my transcribing. Déjà vu! Didn’t I just do this a few weeks earlier?