Bontoc to Sagada: Terror at 5000 Feet

We woke up early.  No, seriously.  This was the day, now was the time.  We had spent two days in Bontoc already, the first enjoying the museum and the comforts of not-being-on-a-bus, and the second exploring the market and struggling with Filipino toilets.  But now, this, our last day in Bontoc, we would see the famed Rice Terraces of Maligcong, the Eighth Wonder of the World!  This was not our first time seeing the Eighth Wonder of the World, but it was our first time seeing this particular Eighth Wonder.  For your illumination, here are the Seven Eighth Wonders of the World:

1. Stonehenge
2. The Moai of Easter Island
3. The Rice Terraces of Maligcong
4. King Kong
5. Angkor Wat
6. Andre the Giant
7. That Pizza with the Cheese Baked in the Crust

I had been told by an extremely helpful employee of the Bontoc Tourist Information Office (a man whose praises are sung in our guidebook, and who may in fact be the only employee of the Bontoc Tourist Information Office) that we could take a Jeepney up to the Rice Terraces, but that this was far less fun than walking up the mountain to see them ourselves; it was only a two-hour walk, and stopping to ask the locals for directions was a much better experience than another Jeepney ride.  Indeed, the thought of jostling up a mountain, our only view from the postage stamp-sized windows of a Jeepney sounded less than thrilling.  The man’s advice was corroborated by the friendly German we had met the night before, who told us that it was only an hour and a half from the top of the mountain back down to the town.  Our brains groggy from days of sitting in the sun and eating pork fat, we struggled with the math necessary to check the estimates we had been given (45 minutes divided by 1 Jeepney, times 1.5 hours return trip, carry the two, minus pi = good times!), but trusted what we had been told and started hiking up the Something Mountain, confident that we would be back in time to catch a Jeepney to Sagada, our next stop.

From the foot of the mountain on the outskirts of town, the view was fantastic.  We followed the tour guide’s advice and his map, which was as charmingly hand-drawn as it was hard to follow.  The valley below us was shrouded in haze, something we had hoped would burn off as the sun grew hotter (we later realized that much of this haze was smoke that had settled over the river -- what we had learned at the Bontoc Museum about the native tribes’ slash-and-burn farming practices seemed suddenly relevant).  Puzzlingly, the view shrank as we hiked up the mountain, scrambling up dirt roads and making friends on the way.

Before long, we had drank our two liters of water.  Yet no matter how high we climbed and how many disbelieving smiles we got from the Jeepneys that zoomed by us, the top of the mountain stubbornly refused to arrive.  Two hours passed, then three.  Our hips and knees started complaining even louder (mine took on the voice of Gilbert Gottfried for maximum irritation).

“Do you think we missed the summit?” I asked.  Yeah, it was even less funny then.

It was now almost 11:00.  The last Jeepney was shockingly few hours away, and here we were, exhausted, sunburnt, and out of water, and we hadn’t even seen the rice terraces except for the steadily-shrinking view that we had passed on the way up.  We tramped back down, passing vansful of happy, air-conditioned tourists on their way up.  Clearly the travel gods were not smiling on us this day.

When we arrived back in town and drank most of its water supply, we made our way to the Jeepney stand.  The line of increasingly crowded Jeepneys stretched around the block.  We approached the one at the front, which was already packed full of tourists and had almost as many bags perched on the roof as there were people clinging to it.  “Going to Sagada?” Jenn asked.

“Yeah, get in!” the driver replied.  We squinted into the darkened cabin, which was already shoulder-to-shoulder.  “In the front!” he clarified.  Jenn squeezed in between the driver and another woman in the front seat.  Sensing an important cultural experience, I took some deep breaths, silently apologized to my mother, and scrambled onto the roof.  I just had enough time to get cross-legged when the Jeepney took off up the mountain road.

For the first 300 meters, all I could think of was the time I wouldn’t climb a wooden watch tower for fear of falling, the time I ran out of Independence Day because I got scared, the time I got in trouble with the police for riding in the back seat of a pickup truck (the fact that my cousins and I were throwing water balloons at passersby may have had something to do with it).  Surely I wasn’t doing this, right?

Up, up the mountain we went, and gradually I got up the courage to take some pictures with one hand as I clung to all of our possessions with the other and held on tight with my toes.  This would be something to tell the grandkids one day, I thought, assuming I live long enough to procreate.  Also, probably shouldn’t tell them that in their parents’ earshot.

Strange omens along the road

"Godspeed"

At last, we arrived in Sagada, which promised to be a(nother) delightful little mountain town.  Hiking to check a few of the local guest houses, we discovered one of the perils of letting whimsy take care of your travel itinerary: we had arrived on Friday evening, and most of the cheap rooms were already booked.  We ended up having to spend a whole 20 bucks on a cottage with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a view #humblebrag