Saturday in Sagada
Saturday morning (not too early), my housemate Dominic and I left our apartment in Tuding to get a jeepney ride into downtown Baguio City. We left the jeepney on General Luna road, passed through Shoppers’ Lane (a shortcut), and further walked through throngs of people buying and selling chickens, eggs, butchered pigs, vegetables and more on our way to a bus depot bordering Center Mall.
For 220 pesos each, we bought bus tickets to Sagada at a GL/ Lizardo bus dispatching/ticket sales booth. Soon afterward, bus 489 arrived at the terminal. We boarded it then waited about half an hour to depart Baguio City. At 10:25 we were on our way to Mountain Province and cool Sagada.
The bus chugged slowly through Baguio City and La Trinidad before reaching the highway. Eventually we were speeding along. This bus ride was similar to the one from Angeles City to Baguio. Coming from Angeles city in March, we had a long straightaway on the lowland before ‘Mr.Toad’s Wild Ride’ in the hills. Saturday we endured the swerving, dizzying maneuvering much earlier -for six hours.
Praise the Lord; we stopped for a bathroom break/snack break after an hour-and-a-half or two. Later, about halfway to Sagada, we stopped at a bus station high in the hills for a 25-minute meal break. Dominic and I didn’t take a turo-turo meal in the greasy-spoon café, but instead bought healthy snacks and walked a way up the road to see and talk to the kids whom we saw playing aside the street and to look at wildflowers and greenhouses.
Back on the bus, resuming our journey, we immediately passed a sign that read 7400 feet – the highest place in the Philippine highway system. We enjoyed a ride through wondrous mountain scenery. Unlike California’s hills, these are lush, green, tree-covered mountain ranges. Pines and many other tree trees stood proudly wherever the hills hadn’t been terraced for rice-growing or cabbage-farming.
If I had a peso for every rice terrace that I’ve seen, I could buy a house. I don’t know if we saw the famous Banaue rice terraces; I don’t have a Philippines road map. But I saw a million terraces.
We saw farmers working, cows grazing, water buffalo drinking, a caribao jogging alongside the bus, kids at play, banana trees waving in the breeze and rain clouds crossing the sky.
We saw men at work paving the highway and building retaining walls, shoveling aggregate, stacking rocks, grinding grooves in a newly-paved lane and enjoying smoke breaks. As we were at altitude, we were among the clouds, and eventually we drove through misting rain. It wasn’t a downpour that warranted closing the bus windows; we rode along with our arms on the windowsills, enjoying the fragrant, cool mountain air. Soon we saw a huge rainbow in the mist above the terraced hills. It was beautiful and more vivid when seen through polarized sunglasses.
After six hours of roaring up and down, left and right on the highway, we arrived in scenic Sagada at 4:30. Dominic and I disembarked with the other tourists and some local residents, then we wondered where to go for lodging. I heaved my huge backpack onto my back, Dominic took my camera bag, and we walked down the main drag to look at the hostels and hotels.
We picked Olahbinan Resthouse, paid 600 pesos (off-season rate) for a room, unpacked a bit of luggage then went out to explore ‘downtown Sagada’ and find a restaurant in which to eat dinner. We dined in Masferré restaurant then emerged into the Mountain Province twilight to walk further down the main road and see what we could see.
In the off-season, many of the businesses that cater to tourists are shuttered, and the remaining businesses close between 7 and 9 p.m. We passed hostels, restaurants, several convenience stores, and an internet café. We talked to and photographed kids who played in the street and skateboarded downhill.
In the fading light we reached the apparent end of civilization on the strip, so we turned around to hike back uphill toward our hotel. We stopped in the internet café which was open until 8:00, then crossed the street to Bana’s coffee shop that we hadn’t seen earlier, and we talked with some well-heeled Filipino tourists for a while before the 9:00 curfew.
Back in the hotel room I took a shower then read a camera manual and a flash manual before praying and going to sleep. I guess Dominic came back much later after lingering at the café, talking with its proprietor and the tourists.
